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From 2012.igem.org

Visiting Secondary Schools

In Apil 2012, two students from the Wageningen University iGEM team headed for a secondary school in the Netherlands. The aim was to make the students familiar with biotechnology, synthetic biology, the iGEM competition and also with our particular iGEM project. Among the departments within the secondary school a lot of variation existed with respect to scientific interest. So besides students with interest in biology and chemistry there were also students with interest in social sciences who were not familiar with biotechnology at all. Some of them were even scared of developments nowadays in genetic engineering. For this particular group it would be challenging to draw their attention.

So the aim was clear: making students of a secondary school around 17-18 year of age familiar with synthetic biology. Before doing so, a few Powerpoint Presentations and other documents with clear explanations about synthetic biology were made and shared with the students to teach them the basics. Also, interesting documentaries about this topic have been shared with the teacher to prepare the students already a little bit. In that way they’ll be more familiar with some basic things and they will more or less have an idea about the progress in biotechnology of the last two decades.

Afterwards, the two iGEM students visited the Secondary School twice. During the first meeting they gave a presentation about some basic genetic engineering tools and afterwards the pupils learned how to extract DNA from fruit with some basic tools like soap, salt, coffee filters and ethanol to precipitate. During this, all necessary steps were explained well, so the pupils were aware in each step of what they were doing, like breaking down cells walls or filtering out other cell components. During this simple experiment, the students experienced that DNA is present everywhere even in the fruit they eat and how simple the principle of DNA extraction is. This makes DNA a much more visualisable concept for the students.

At the end of the day, several articles about ethical issues among genetic engineering were handed out to the students, they were assigned to read it and come up with an opinion about the particular topic. The pupils were also supposed to make a leaflet about certain synthetic biology topics. There was no standard design and they were assigned to come up with a leaflet from scratch with their own thoughts, topics and creative ideas. This resulted in a lot of nice leaflets which were discussed during the second time the iGEM students visited this Secondary School. Some of the creative leaflets made are uploaded on our webpage. The leaflets are written in Dutch because it was a Dutch School.

A small summary in English of the leaflets:

Leaflet 1: The leaflet starts with a small summary of the possibilities of synthetic biology. They mention advantages in medicine production, the production of artificial cells and tissue for injured people and the advantages synthetic biology could have for the environment. They claim that synthetic biology would be able to contribute to those three topics and they enforce this claim with an example of a breakthrough of the iGEM team of the University of Groningen which, in 2010, came up with a protective biological layer for industrial ships. This layer could replace the conventional chemical layers which harm the environment due to heavy metals. In the end they mention genetic heredity and they warn of the fact that in the future people could ‘order’ children with specific traits. They raise the ethical question: should this be possible?

Leaflet 2: In this leaflet, synthetic biology is defined and explained with some examples. A clear overview of pros and cons of synthetic biology and its possibilities is given and they explain how synthetic biology could create life. Furthermore they explain how heredity works and of what components the DNA exists.

Leaflet 3: This leaflet also describes what synthetic biology in fact is and how heredity works. They explain how science theoretically could modify a human being on DNA level. Furthermore they mention some examples like a project of some Taiwanese scientists who in 2006 made pigs which had a green fluorescence gene incorporated which enables the pigs to lighten up in the dark.

Leaflet 4: This leaflet also explains synthetic biology, heredity and provides some examples and possibilities. However they also gave an example about plant breeding. They mention the advantage of accurately create a tomato plant with better properties like an enlargement of the fruit. In the end they sum up some pros and cons of the recent developments in synthetic biology.

All in all, it was interesting to teach those 60 Secondary School students in synthetic biology and confront them with all ethical issues and possibilities concerning genetic engineering.