Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/hp dnaweek
From 2014hs.igem.org
DNA Week
Even though iGEM has been in our high school since 2012, most students still didn’t know what it is about. We have as a goal that future generations inside CIDEB show more interest and curiosity towards biology, and as a consequence, towards iGEM.
We, as a team, consider important that, if we want everybody to know what iGEM is and that our high school is involved, the starting point must be inside our own institution.
With the purpose of spreading iGEM and our project, and taking advantage of the international DNA Day (April 25th), we organized the DNA Week.
Images. Students paying attention and participating in the activities.
Our DNA week consisted of a series of presentations and activities, which were given to all classes of the generation that has a chance to be part of the next iGEM CIDEB team. We asked permission to 3 different biology teachers, and we organized the dates and hours in a 4-day schedule, in May 12th, 13th, 14th, and 16th. We did a Power Point Presentation with information about iGEM and our project. We also performed two activities referring to synthetic biology and to our project between the information given, with the purpose of keeping the audience interested in what we were talking about.
THE
PRESENTATION CONSISTED ON: |
|
What is IGEM? |
A general explanation of the iGEM competition. |
What is synthetic biology? |
The creation of biological machines in order
to give new features to organisms. |
Talking about DNA |
A brief explanation of DNA and genes, which
make every organism different from each other. |
GAME TIME The first game represented the insertion of
modified plasmids to the bacteria. They used toy guns to shoot the different
plasmids into three different bacteria, taking into account the difference between red, green, and yellow fluorescence proteins in each bacteria. |
|
IGEM in our high school |
CIDEB_UANL has participated in the iGEM competition for the last 2 years, obtaining the 3rd
place in each one. |
CIDEB 2014’s project |
E.CARU consists in 4 modules: - The capture of Na+ ions - The productions of an aroma (Wintergreen) - Resistance to different environmental conditions - Binding to silica pearls. |
The last game consisted of a bacteria which
two students had to transform into E.CARU, placing in it the characteristics
that make it unique muscles of resistance, a drawn silica pearl
representing the binding the bacteria, leafs of aroma and a sodium (Na+), which represented the capture of the ions. |
While the last year’s project was only known by a few students, this year is a completely different situation. Now, thanks to activities like this, most of the students at CIDEB know about iGEM. This is a good thing because some of them will form the new iGEM CIDEB generation next year, and the possibilities of gaining members who are really interested has increased, since they are expecting to approach it.