Team:UNAM Genomics Mexico/HumanPractices/Round Table

From 2012.igem.org

(Difference between revisions)
(Created page with "{{:Template:Team:UNAM_Genomics_Mexico/Templates/css/style}} {{:Template:Team:UNAM_Genomics_Mexico/webhtml| content= <br /> <center><h1>'''Project Overview'''</h1></center> <br /...")
Line 3: Line 3:
<br />
<br />
-
<center><h1>'''Project Overview'''</h1></center>
+
<center><h1>'''Symposium on Science Communication'''</h1></center>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
 +
Every stage in a project must come to a closing. The same way all of our favorite TV shows have Season Finales, our Human Practices project came to a "''season finale''" with an event that congregated several personalities at the local and national level to discuss the issues we addressed throughout this year.
 +
 +
This event was a Symposium on Science Communication called '''"Perspectives on Science Perception and Communication"''', held at the Auditorium of the Center for Genomic Sciences on October 23rd, 2012. This symposium consisted of the following activities:
 +
 +
:::1. Inauguration by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology of the State of Morelos, Mexico, Brenda Valderrama.
 +
:::2. Presentation of the Bacillus Booleanus project by our Team Members
 +
:::3. A brief recess to allow the atendees of the Symposium to see the BioSintetizARTE exposition
 +
:::4. A "Round Table" about Science Communication and Perception with noted science communicators, scientists and representatives of the society.
 +
<br />
 +
<br />
 +
<html>
<html>
<div class="top-slider-main">
<div class="top-slider-main">
Line 40: Line 51:
</html>
</html>
-
<br />
 
-
<br />
+
 
 +
 
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
 +
 +
<br />
<br />
-
Cells receive a wide variety of cellular and environmental signals, which are often processed combinatorially to generate specific genetic responses. The expression of a gene is regulated by other proteins (Transcription Factors). This regulation is due to the interaction between TFs and their binding sites on DNA sequences, which inhibits or promotes the binding of RNA polymerase to the gene to start transcription.
 
<br />
<br />
 +
 +
<br />
<br />
-
Regulation can be quantified by the "response characteristics", meaning the level of gene expression as a function of the concentration of (activated) TFs. Although we consider protein concentration as a continuous variable, essential features of the response characteristics can often be represented more compactly by a binary "logic function", which specifies whether a gene is "ON" (expressed) or "OFF" (silent, or expressed at basal level) at different extremes of cellular TF concentrations.(1)
 
<br />
<br />
-
<br />
 
-
Bacillus Booleanus was born as a project in which we were going to create several boolean operations following one another, specifically, two ANDs and one OR. Obviously, as with any other project, it came a time when we had to ask ourselves, how on Earth were we going to accomplish that?. Of course, quorum sensing has always been a common choice in the iGEM community when it comes to boolean operations, but we decided to try another perspective, and ta-da! Bacillus booleanus was born! We took advantage of the super-powers reported to exist in Bacillus subtilis by Ben-Yehuda et al. (2) to establish this communication. Probably the unsuspecting reader is asking herself, what could this said super-powers be? Well, in 2011, Ben-Yehuda et al. showed that Bacillus subtilis was capable of creating nanotubes between and within strains to send relatively big proteins and communicate between them. Who says that we are living in an isolating era?
 
-
<br />
 
-
<br />
 
-
Well, since these super-powers were not enough to fight crime, we decided better to insert into the chromosomes of two different strains of our beloved bacterium the same transcription factor, but regulated by two different promoters, each needing two input signals to be activated (imitating the computational ANDs), and in another strain a promoter that was activated by this transcription factor (imitating the OR).
 
-
<br />
 
-
<br />
 
-
Then, Bacillus subtilis (imitating Houdini) would make its magic and the different strains would communicate, creating a connection between three different Boolean operations. This would make us really happy. <br /><br />
 
-
(1)Buchler et al. On schemes of combinatorial transcription logic print April 17, 2003, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0930314100 PNAS April 29, 2003 vol. 100 no. 9 5136-5141<br /><br />
 
-
[https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2012/0/0f/Nanotubes.pdf (2)] Dubey GP, Ben -Yehuda S.; Intercellular nanotubes mediate bacterial communication. Cell. 2011; 144(4):590-600.<br /><br />
+
 
 +
 
 +
 
}}
}}

Revision as of 09:20, 25 October 2012


UNAM-Genomics_Mexico


Symposium on Science Communication



Every stage in a project must come to a closing. The same way all of our favorite TV shows have Season Finales, our Human Practices project came to a "season finale" with an event that congregated several personalities at the local and national level to discuss the issues we addressed throughout this year.

This event was a Symposium on Science Communication called "Perspectives on Science Perception and Communication", held at the Auditorium of the Center for Genomic Sciences on October 23rd, 2012. This symposium consisted of the following activities:

1. Inauguration by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology of the State of Morelos, Mexico, Brenda Valderrama.
2. Presentation of the Bacillus Booleanus project by our Team Members
3. A brief recess to allow the atendees of the Symposium to see the BioSintetizARTE exposition
4. A "Round Table" about Science Communication and Perception with noted science communicators, scientists and representatives of the society.



















Retrieved from "http://2012.igem.org/Team:UNAM_Genomics_Mexico/HumanPractices/Round_Table"