Team:IISER Tirupati/Public Engagement
Outreach
For our human practices, we mainly wanted to focus on spreading awareness about synthetic biology and its future prospects in our country amongst students. Our aim was to help students realise the potential and applications of synthetic biology as an emerging field. We hope our efforts and engagement with students helped develop their interest in science.
O.D.M. Public School, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha
Omkar Mohapatra
For the very first outreach, we chose O.D.M. Public School, a highly appreciated school in the Indian state of Odisha.
The session started with promoting research as an important wing of science, and an introduction to different research institutes and opportunities in India. The talk continued with an introduction to cancers, colon cancer specifically, and its statistics in India followed up by current progress of research in that field. We then moved on to talk about our project ‘Coca Coli’, why we named it so, and an overview of our project. Keeping in mind the target audience, who were high school students, we introduced them to simple laboratory techniques and images of fluorescent bacteria. They were fascinated by the images and questions started pouring in, which made the session interactive. Finally, we concluded by introducing iGEM and briefed them about innovative projects from previous years. The faculties were also very curious and interactive.
We were overwhelmed by the response and feel very lucky to have been able to conduct our outreach there.
Government Girls Vocational Higher Secondary School, Nemmara, Kerala
Neelima K.
Next, we visited GGVHS school in southern state of Kerala as a part of outreach. We got the opportunity to talk to 12th standard students and to introduce them to synthetic biology, iGEM, and also our iGEM project. We started the session by giving them a primer about DNA and then visited the idea of the central dogma of molecular biology. The students were asked to share their ideas on how to make a change in a protein or a DNA sequence followed by its applications such as seedless fruit production. This brought up the idea of genetic engineering and molecular cloning, which was then discussed.
We explained molecular cloning in simple terms and basic tools involved in cloning, namely, PCR amplification, restriction digestion, ligation, transformation and selection were also introduced. In order to make the session more interesting and understandable, we explained the techniques by using paper cuttings and also had them participate in the same by themselves. The students really enjoyed the ‘paper molecular cloning’ activity. Later, we discussed the applications of molecular cloning and genetic engineering. Students were really enthusiastic about giving their own ideas about applications. The session came to an end by giving the students a brief idea about iGEM and also about our current iGEM project- Coca Coli.
Montfort High School, Mettur, Tamil Nadu
Deevitha Balasubramanian
As the final part of reaching out to young minds around our country, we went to Montfort High School, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India. We introduced high school students to synthetic biology, and the iGEM competition. A presentation and discussion session were held in a classroom, packed with 10th grade students, who had basic knowledge in science and mathematics.
We started out in an interactive session by asking which subjects the students enjoyed and why they did so; many of them liked biology, but no one had yet been introduced to interdisciplinary subjects. From this, we put forth the idea of synthetic biology - a mix of biology and engineering - into the conversation. After inculcating the idea of “artificial” biology, we started with the presentation - beginning with chromosomes, DNA and genes, and then moving on to alteration of the genome. The students were shown pictures on how “cut-and-paste” of the genome occurs via enzymes, and they were told about basic techniques like transformation and uses of these processes in industries. All of this was brought down to very basic ideas, and they were explained why changing the genome can result in such drastic changes in cell biology.
Following this basic introduction to the technical aspects of synthetic biology, we moved on to applications. This helped many of the students realise why such areas are being explored as research topics. We then discussed various other proteins that could be synthesised by such a process. The students were extremely enthusiastic about suggesting protein names, and finding out what had been done related to them.
The discussion then ended, by telling the students about using organisms as “machines”, the iGEM competition; and giving them a little insight into our project Coca Coli - an application of SynBio in cancer therapy.
"We play with bacteria and sometimes they play us"
Contact us
Email: igemiisertirupati@gmail.com
Address:
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati
C/o Sree Rama Engineering College (Transit Campus),
Rami Reddy Nagar, Karakambadi Road,
Mangalam (P.O.) Tirupati -517507.
Andhra Pradesh, INDIA
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