Team:Valencia/human practices

In a village on the outskirts of Valencia, we carried out a series of activities through which we taught children and their parents some basics about Synthetic Biology.

We started with a mural of DNA that children had to paint. We also did animal cut-outs to make them understand what the aim of Synthetic Biology is: assemble standardize 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. Read more.

Some members from our team got involved in the activities organized at Metrovalencia to introduce synthetic biology to children. We prepared different workshops, such as painting DNA molecules or assembling different imaginary animals.

While the children were having good time learning, we tried to transmit their parents some notions on synthetic biology together with an introduction to iGEM and our project. Read more.

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.

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, always defending the idea that in all scientific experiments, before and when doing them, we have to bear in mind the ethical issues.

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. Read more.

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).

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