Team:Valencia/human practices

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Synth(ethic) biology.
We have created a blog to talk about Synthetic Biology, post some interviews to experts in Bioethics, report some of the activities we did to teach people about Synthetic Biology and invite some participants of previous years to talk about their experiences in iGEM.

Our team mate Alex Damián carried out a seminar about Synthetic Biology and our project in iGEM at the Marine Sciences Research Institute (CSIC, Barcelona). There, the audience was composed by biologist and marine scientist with different years of experience.

First of all, he gave a little explanation introducing Synthetic Biology and the importance of outreach activities and worldwide brainstorming campaigns, such as iGEM.

He finished the speech by giving an interactive time composed of questions and a little discussion about recent papers of Synthetic Biology.

Read the whole report clicking on the photo:

In a village on the outskirts of Valencia, we carried out a series of activities through which we taught children and their parents what DNA and Synthetic Biology are. It is necessary to add that, besides learning, they enjoyed a lot the activities.

We started with a mural of DNA that children had to paint, some parents got interested and helped with the painting. We also did animal cut-outs to make them understand what the aim of Synthetic Biology is: assemble parts to give an organism a new ability.

Finally, they played with water ballons in two teams: adenines had to wet timines and guanines had to wet citosines. So they finished the activities damp but having learned a lot and having passed a good time.

In view of the concern about bioethics, we decided to interview the director of the Institute of Life Sciences, in which there is an area of Bioethics. At this interview we asked him his opinion about Synthetic Biology and about iGEM.

First of all we asked him how he met the area of Synthetic Biology and if he was participating in some line of investigation in this area.

Then, he answered some questions about his opinion on different topics connected to the area we are talking about, always defending the idea that in all scientific experiments, before and when doing them, we have to bear in mind the ethical side.

Finally we wanted to know what was his point of view about contests as iGEM and he told us that anything that had the aim to stimulate and to interest students on research was fantastic.

It can be read by clicking on the photo.

With the aim to know the opinion of the majority of the population, we are doing an opinion poll and, afterwards, we will analyze the results statistically.

If you want to help us you can answer the poll for your age by clicking on the link bellow.