HUMAN PRACTICES
As part as our human practices we have obtained our own display area to promote IGEM and our project to a more general audience. This will take place at the Norwich science festival which will be held in the main atrium of the Forum in central Norwich. We will be explaining to the public the science behind our project and the pressing issue of renewable energy challenges that face the world today as well as the hot topic of the ethics that surround synthetic biology research.
One of the main attractions for our stall during the Norwich science festival will be our virtual reality experience to better engage the public in the world of synthetic biology. The VR experience will be available to anyone who wants to visualise what our bacteria, Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, looks like as well a brief introduction on the protein complexes involved in our project. Anyone using the VR headset will be transported to the microscopic world of bacteria and gain a much clearer understanding of the science behind our project, such as following the path of an electron between the cell and its environment through the protein complex mtrCAB. To find out more about our virtual reality experience please click <a href="virtual">here</a>
Additionally, we will be presenting our own comic book, designed by the BioWire team, to help our younger audiences see the bigger picture behind our project, being the global issue of climate change and our hunt for more efficient renewable fuels. The comic will also illustrate how bacteria can be engineered to do good and that not all bacteria is bad, as most children might believe.
The comic book was created to make the science behind our project more understandable for a younger audience. We then used this at various events, such as open days and are planning to put the comic on display at the science festival in Norwich, which is more centred around children and families to help spark their interest in science. The idea of creating a short comic stems from the children that took park in the summer schools we helped, who didn’t know what bacteria looked like or had a very limited understanding of why we needed to find renewable fuel sources, as well as the basic ideas behind our project. The prompted us to find a way of making this clearer to children, as well as fun, and we came to the conclusion that a Comic would be the best idea. Our comic is available for download for free in PDF format by clicking on the link provided.
<a class="directFile" href="/media/images/practices/comicbook.pdf">Download</a>