Team:Brasil-SP/Outreach/Open University - society within the Academy

Open University

     The Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) organizes a popular (and free entry) meeting named “Universidade Aberta” (translated as “Open University”) since 1998. The major goal of Open University is to increase the interest of young citizens for the knowledge, science, as well as for academic careers that lead to a profession. People of all ages can attend the event, but the main target audience are high school students. The Open University is one of the most important academic event in the north-central region of São Paulo State, where live nearly 2 million inhabitants. This year, in September 22^th and 23^th, around 15,000 visitors from São Carlos and neighbor cities attended to the meeting, a special moment that integrated people from society and academy.

      We (members of Brasil-SP Team) presented about the perspectives of the Biotechnology career in Brazil, the Biotechnology Course offered by UFSCar, and as well as about Synthetic Biology. Presentations include one lecture, eight guided visits to molecular biology and microbiology local laboratories, and a total of 24 hours of interaction activities, from reception to dialogue with visitors at our stall, based on a rotating schedule of members (14 hours in Sept 22^th and 10 hours in Sept 23^th). In the labs, attendees received information about infrastructure, basic and applied research, and observed the differences between non-transformed bacteria compared to recombinant bacteria expressing GFP. In the stall, iGEMers presented different strategies to publicize both Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology, such as: plastic parts for assembly of three-dimensional structure of DNA and proteins; models of recombinant plasmid, E. coli, restriction enzymes, and BioBricks. The main highlight was the presentation of our research project and genetic circuit designed for iGEM 2014, “The Kidney Sensing”, which illustrated for the audience how students are able to make cutting edge science since their first years in the University.

iGEM presentation at Biothecnology course stand in order to explain Synthetic Biology for society.

iGEM reaching the high school

     On August 28^th,2014, a total of 239 high school students (from 14 to 17 years old) of Mafra city (located in Santa Catarina State, Brazil) had the opportunity to hear about Synthetic Biology for the first time in their lives. Guilherme Kundlatsch (member of Brasil-SP Team) presented 4 lectures, each lasting 90 minutes. To succeed in his talk, Guilherme first taught about the flow of genetic information (from DNA to proteins), history of molecular biology, recombinant DNA techniques (and concepts such as restriction enzyme, ligation enzyme, and bacterial plasmid transformation were also discussed). Great job! Students were ready to begin a journey through Synthetic Biology. Guilherme started talking about some of the past iGEM projects such as: 1 - The Food Warden (Groningen Team, 2012), a system which allows the costumer to detect meat spoilage easily; 2 - E. chromi (Cambridge Team, 2009), a set of parts that allows generation of a rainbow of color pigments in E. coli which permits the use of a engineered bacterium for coloring the poop as biosensor for the human gastro-intestinal tract; 3 - Detecthol (USP Team, 2013), a bioengineered sensor, which is able to detect levels of methanol above 2% in common alcoholic drinks. Finally, he explained the Brasil-SP project, the “Kidney Sensing”. The excitement of the students was remarkable, and it was observed especially at the time they asked questions about ethical concepts, more details about some techniques and predictions for the future. Curiously, at the beginning of each lecture Guilherme always asked students to raise their hands up who knew anything about the subject... and no one did it. We are convinced that at the end of each lecture, everyone understood at least the basics of Synthetic Biology. Several of them were inspired to pursue a career in, since they kept talking about the topics and courses in different universities of our country. Surely the enthusiasm for this new and promising field of science was awakened in many potential young researchers.

Synthetic Biology class at Mafra-SC, Brazil.

SIFSC

     SIFSC (from Portuguese, Institute of Physics of São Carlos Integrated Week) is an event held annually, at Institute of Physics of São Carlos, which provides some employments or groups the chance to expose their works to the people who participate of it. This year, on October 9^th, our group got a stand where we could expose our iGEM project, showing to those who come see us all we have done this year related to synthetic biology.

List of our SIFSC stand visitors.