Guanajuato Mexico (GTO_Mexico)

This year we collaborated with the Guanajuato Mexico team in developing a curriculum as an introduction to synthetic biology for first year university students. This curriculum covered the basics of biology, synthetic biology and applications. Specifically, we designed a lesson plan on the ethics of synthetic biology followed by a debate on the justification of using synthetic biology in a real case study. This helped to expose the students to different viewpoints on the applications of synthetic biology and what we should be aware of as scientists in designing these biological systems. We were able to present this curriculum including our lesson plan to a group of first year students in Guanajuato.

Not everyone in the class shared the same perspective on synthetic biology and genetically modified organisms. From this collaboration we gained a better understanding of the perception the general public held on the usage of synthetic biology. We learned that a large fear is due to safety and contamination to existing infrastructure. This helped our project by reevaluating some of the project requirements we initially established. It also helped us find a way to better communicate our research to the general public. We also sparked the interest of these students in joing iGEM the next year through educating them.

Link: Guanajuato Mexico’s Wiki on our collaboration

Rice University

We contributed to the Humans of Syn Bio Project by adding stories from members of our team about how they became involved with iGEM. Through this collaboration we were able to help create a network community among iGEMers by sharing our stories. We were able to learn the difference stories of iGEMers across the world and the reasons why they became involved.

Link: Our post with Rice University