Difference between revisions of "Team:BostonU HW/HP/Silver"

We met the public alongside both Boston Museum of Science staff and other iGEM teams to educate about the basics of synthetic biology through entertaining activities. One such activity included solving problems using synthetic biology using various genetic “building blocks,” each labeled with a specific function, and stacking certain blocks together such that the entire “genetic device” had the ability to solve the chosen problem. Another was synthetic biology bingo, where questions about synthetic biology were asked and the contestants were to choose the picture on their bingo sheet which corresponded to the answer.

After these activities, we met in small groups and performed an ethical seminar regarding the use of synthetic biology, specifically on ridding the malaria-carrying mosquitoes from regions of Africa. In this seminar, each group took on roles of various members of the local and scientific community, and each group was to come to a consensus on whether to release some variation of GM mosquitoes or not, and to what scale the release would be, to combat malaria.

We taught the public about microfluidics as well, making the analogy of scientists doing experiments to bakers trying to find the best cake. If the baker only needed a taste to test how the cake came out, why make a whole cake? We described microfluidics as “mini-ovens” in which scientists could make “mini-cakes,” to check if the “cake” came out good. This would save the baker/scientist lots of time and ingredients.

In order to reach out to young women interested in STEM fields of study, we teamed up with the BostonU iGEM wetlab team to speak at the Boston University-hosted event Summer Pathways. During this seminar, we were able to teach high school students from areas around New England about basic synthetic biology and electrical engineering principles through interactive activities operated in smaller groups. We then engaged all of these students in a discussion about synbio and engineering ethics using a mock debate over whether or not the proposed solution of terraforming Mars was reasonable and ethical. Each student first read a short article explaining more context and highlighting various options as possible paths of action. All of these options encouraged students to consider and discuss biologists’ responsibilities to human civilization, other life forms, and the environment.