Survey: new plant breeding techniques

Hay que analizarlo. Pero la conclusión es que a la gente no le gusta porque no sabe lo que hay, ni de qué va, ni cómo funciona, ni qué diferencia hay.

Every child is a scientist

Kids are natural scientists. They have an enquiring spirit. They are very curious and aren’t afraid to admit that they do not know something. Exploring and drawing conclusions from their experiences allow them to build a more predictable world. That is why we think that childhood is the suitable moment to impress them the passion for research and knowledge. This way, it is possible to start educating society to analyze and interpret science, instead of rejecting innovation. If they understand, they will have the ability to receive change without fear.

This summer, we have taken part of their adventure of learning at the Summer School of the City of Arts and Sciences from Valencia. They have been approached biological aspects from cell biology such as molecular genetics or the main biological processes – replication, transcription and translation. But we strongly believe that young children learn best through doing, so apart from a brief introduction, we have mainly focused on practical activities and games to strengthen the concepts as much as possible. They have had to adopt the role of the main enzymes such as polymerases and ribosomes to carry out the processes of transmission and expression of genetic heritage. To get this, we have proposed some games like creating a protein from a DNA sequence by adding amino acids, writing their names nucleotides based on an imaginary genetic code, or guessing the genetic similarities between different species.
With all these games we also wanted to impress on children the idea of what scientific investigation involves. Real examples of proteins and experiments were used to show that not everything works the first time, even in real organism, mutations and other errors occur. Furthermore, some experiments fall in a heap, so they had to find out what went wrong, guess why, and try again. And this is one of the main characteristics of science, it involves a lot of debate, talking and listening to others and meet group agreements and conclusions.
Children have very enquiring minds, thus they are always asking questions and wondering about what could happen before they do something, creating hypothesis in their minds. Those approaches are very interesting to be stimulated since young, in order to face reality with a critical thinking, but also to help people to build their own ideas and convictions and refuse non reliable statements.

But of course, we did not forget that we are iGEMers, so it was ineludible to talk with them about Synthetic Biology and all benefits that this field can contribute to society to make a better world. First of all, they were enquired about their ideas of what Synthetic Biology is, and we explained them the repercussion of biotechnology research on society with some fascinating examples. Nevertheless, we wanted them to catch the motivation and desire for creativity, so we proposed them to create their own organisms by using Synthetic Biology principles and all their imagination.

It has been clearly an enrichment experience for both children and us, which has provided us a different point of perception of biological sciences and how to face the problems with creative and innovative solutions. We must maximize children’s potential, because every child is a scientist.

It is never too late to learn

Fear of innovation comes from ignorance. We believe that rejection of science advances as synthetic biology or crop improvement happen because non-expert people don’t know how these innovations works or what can they do for us now and in the future. For that reason, we decided to give a talk about synthetic biology. Its title was "Learning to program life".
The talk was given in a pub, as part of the initiative “Skepticals in the Pub” in Valencia, were each Friday people interested in the topic of the day reunite in a pub to learn more about the subject. The relaxed ambient and the dynamic talks serve as appeal for many people to go to the pub and learn about science by listening to experts in the field. Even if we are not true experts, we thought that our team was prepared to show how synthetic biology works and what impressive things can be done with it.