Open Lab Day
What comes to people's mind when they hear the word 'synthetic biology'? Many people don't know what it is, or have an ambiguous image whether it is something dangerous. This situation is not good for synthetic biology at all, because the applications and possibilities of this field are generally undermined, rendering application difficult, which already made a struggle by the current laws.
Last year was the first time Xiamen University participated in iGEM competition. After coming back to school with our first Gold Medal, we decided to continue promoting synthetic biology and attract more students to love synthetic biology.
On July 17th, we invited some students from Pinghe First High School and Jiyan High School to our laboratory. Then our activity began, which can be divided into two parts.
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Introduction to Synthetic Biology and the 2011 iGEM team
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One of our team advisors, Wu Xin, gave a brief introduction to what synthetic biology was and what our past team did in the 2011 iGEM. This introduction covered some fundamental biological knowledge that was necessary for better understanding of synthetic biology, as well as a conceptualized explanation of how synthetic biology worked. For example, the concept of a 'gene' was introduced, followed by the method we used to obtain large copies of the same gene (PCR). During the introduction, we also encouraged students to engage in the activity by asking questions to help them understand synthetic biology better. |
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Experimental manipulation
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In order to gave them a chance to have a better understanding on how synthetic biology could be practiced in real life, we showed these students what we did in a synthetic biology lab for research purposes. For example, during the activity, they learned how to use MicroPette Plus to extract plasmid and how to run agarose gel electrophoresis to evaluate the size of DNA fragments. They also practiced how to tie up the tapered bottle when preparing the culture medium.
In general, Most of the students showed a great interest in synthetic biology research after visiting the lab. "Synthetic biology is interesting" said a student from Pinghe First High School, "I've learnt a lot during this lab visit and I hope I would become a scientist in the future!"
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