D iscovery Day is an event organized by hosted by Georgia State's students and staff where we invite families from all around the community to come and learn about all things science! Georgia State’s iGEM team participated in GSU's Discovery Day, where we created an activity for young students to construct their own plasmid containing a promoter, RBS, coding sequence, and terminator. Their plasmid was represented by a bracelet. Each participant made their own bracelet using different colored/shaped beads. The different colored beads represented different features of a plasmid. Students constructed a plasmid that had a promoter, a ribosomal binding site, coding sequence of a fluorescent protein, and a terminator. After constructing their plasmid, they transformed it into E. coli by placing it into a cardboard cartoon E.coli model. The E. coli then produced a protein, a jolly rancher, based on the coding sequence that the student chose to put in their plasmid bracelet. The students were able to learn a little bit about plasmid assembly and how to transform their plasmids into E. coli to express the protein they coded for. We wanted to show the students the basics of what we do in our lab in introduce them to the idea of biotechnology.
E xploration Expo also known as Atlanta Science Festival is the same kind of event as Discovery Day but on a much larger scale. Atlanta Science Festival takes place in Piedmont Park and has hundreds of tables where all kinds of members from the scientific community are represented. Each table has a certain activity planned that fosters a greater appreciation and understanding of complex concepts in a fun and engaging way. We did the same plasmid assembly activity as the one done on Discovery Day and it was a great hit! We had participants of all ages participate from all kinds of demographic and educational backgrounds. This event had a much larger audience with a wider age range. Young children and teens stopped by our booth to learn about transformation and protein production. We were able to interact with a diverse group of students and parents in not only English, but Spanish and Chinese as well. This was a fulfilling and successful outreach experience that GSU iGEM will participate in again in the future.
