Team:Tec-Monterrey/hpractice

We first gave a series of informational sessions in several high-schools of our city. Synthetic biology was presented as a very versatile tool which could help anyone create new solutions for existing problems. iGEM was discussed as very important part of biotechnology, the relevance of a global competition, where students from all around the world applied their knowledge in a effort to improve the status quo of millions of people.

During the workshops, we introduced the students to the Parts Registry and explained them the way it operates. We also taught them briefly how can they search for parts they need and how can they add their own.

Workshop #1 (August 4th, 2012)

What is the material and equipment of a Lab and how to use it? The objective of this workshop was to introduce the team, our projects, give a very complete definition of Synthetic Biology, a description of the iGem competition and introduction to some basic protocols and equipment used in the Lab. We agreed in this first session students should become familiar with the facilities, equipment and laboratory instruments and for their introduction to practical protocols they learned to prepare growth medium (LB) and use a micropipette. There were a lot of questions and interest from the students who were more than happy to learn how to participate in the workshop.

Workshop #2 (August 21st, 2012): Bacterial DNA: Purification of Plasmid DNA (Miniprep)

This workshop had as a goal to share with the students one of the most basic and used protocols in the development of a Synthetic Biology project, the purification of plasmid DNA. In order to do this, we gave a clear explanation of the principles of bacterial DNA, the differences between genomic and plasmid DNA with the basis of their extraction and purification. They integrated teams and purified plasmid DNA (pUC19) from Top10F E.coli.

Workshop #3 (September 13th, 2012): Karyotype and Chromosomes

Since the students were becoming familiar with DNA, plasmids and chromosomes; we designed a workshop for them to observe and develop a karyotype protocol. It started with a brief description of chromosomes and their function (the majority of them were already familiar with the terms) and afterwards, they integrated teams to develop a staining and observation on microscopes of chromosomes from plant material.

Workshop #4 (September 18th, 2012): Restriction Enzymes and Electrophoresis

The objective of this workshop was for students to understand and practice the concepts of plasmids and restriction enzymes as well to develop a digestion and electrophoresis gel protocol. We gave a description of how electrophoresis and restriction enzymes work, we encouraged them to ask questions if needed. Afterwards, they practiced the concepts by making their own digestion, preparing the agarose gels and charging the samples. Finally, they observed their results and analyzed them. They observed the difference between a supercoiled DNA and a linearized DNA.

Workshop #5 (September 20th,2012): Applications of Restriction Enzymes and Electrophoresis

We decided to give a more fun twist to the last workshop by making the students analyze the many applications of electrophoresis. The workshop started by a brief explanation of some of the applications, then we promoted a discussion with the students for them to propose how and where they think electrophoresis and restriction enzymes were used. Afterwards, the students developed a protocol using a Forensic BIO-RAD kit to identify the supposed criminal of a crime scene. After that, we decided to make a conclusive discussion and encouraged students to analyze what they learned in all the workshops. We were very pleased to know that everyone showed interest and wanted to continue learning more about iGem and Synthetic Biology.

Collaboration

During summer, we were interested in learning how other Teams from Latin America were doing with their projects; therefore, we contacted a few of them in order to share our experiences. One of these teams was Costa Rica-TEC-UNA, who we contacted via Facebook. After disscussing with them the aim of our projects, they asked our team to review their constructs and debug them if needed. We found no problems with the design of the constructs, although we did noticed that some nucleotides were missing from Suffix and Preffix parts of the sequence. The missing nucleotides caused a modification on the reading frame. Additionally, we gave them some thoughts regarding the proteins they were using, because undesired expression of such proteins could prematurely begin cell lysis.

Around August, we began communications with some other teams from Mexico. An official gathering with teams Ciencias UNAM, UNAM_Genomics_Mexico, UANLe_Mexico and CINVESTAV-IPN-UNAM_MX took place at Irapuato, where we discussed some problems concerning working at iGEM projects in Mexico, for example:

- DNA synthesis
- DNA Kits – wells containing bad or no DNA at all
- Sharing synthetic Biology
- Communication between Mexican teams
- Video Games and synthetic biology

Some of these areas of opportunity later became the main Human Practice evaluation for some Mexican teams. Nevertheless, even though some ideas did not proceeded beyond planning, the teams took the opportunity to meet and greet each other in order to ease further collaborations and encourage a friendlier and more cooperative environment between present and future Mexican iGEM teams.

Human Practices

Synthetic Biology might be considered an unknown term for a significant part of the population even for young adults or college students enrolled in non-biological sciences courses. Our human practices focused on sharing and explaining the definition and applications of synthetic biology, making it a simple concept for the individuals involved to analyze and formulate their own ideas. An important experience of our human practices motivated a portion of society to examine and question themselves how synthetic biology takes part of their daily lives in products, scientific investigations they watch on TV, etc. It also revolved around making it easy to understand by simple explanations of our projects development and reaching out to the majority of people we could. To do all of this, our human practices included workshops for high school students, educational videogames of our projects and finally, an introductory presentation and discussion of synthetic biology for adults such as parents.

Synthetic Biology Presentation for Parents

Sharing the interest of Synthetic Biology with young students is very important but also interacting with society. In that manner, we decided to give explanatory presentations about iGem, our project and Synthetic Biology to parents who were visiting the University. The presentation included a very clear explanation of DNA, genes, Synthetic Biology and it’s applications as well as an introductory description to iGem Competition. We managed to give 3 presentations, two of them for parents only and the last one for prospect students of Engineering in Biotechnology and their parents. We were very happy to know they were impressed about the applications, the development of our project and motivated their sons and daughters to participate in iGem in their college years.