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Team:Carnegie Mellon/SynBio
From 2014.igem.org
With the aid of DNAZone, the educational outreach center of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Nucleic Acids Science and Technology (CNAST), the iGEM team aided in the development of four kits/labs for students and teachers to use in a classroom setting. These kits were taken out into the community and classrooms to be beta tested for final production occurring in January. They were also shipped out to different points around the United States and to an orphanage in Bolivia for further testing.
Our original iGEM baby, Creature Feature was a lab born out of necessity but kept and worked on due to its initial success with 60 seventh graders. In Creature Feature, students receive a creature’s characteristics (phenotypic candy) based on a genetic sequence (genotype) that they create out of beads (alleles). They construct this creature out of their materials and are told about evolutionary adaptation and how this creature’s features were a result of decades living in a very dry and hot climate. An environmental disaster is on its way, the great flood, and students are tasked to genetically alter the creature to become waterproof should they want it to survive. Extracting one of the three different waterproof genes from SuperCreature, students are handed an imperfect Ziploc to waterproof their creatures. Students then have to figure out a method and materials to complete the Ziploc bag, or at least seal it order to survive the Great Flood (a water-dunking test)!
Future Impact: Creature Feature took to students and teachers alike by storm! Created on June 6th on a winding down Friday afternoon, it was presented to 60 seventh graders as part of an 80-minute lesson plan the following Wednesday. Due to the popularity with the kids that first day, we decided to pursue this lab, back it up with scientific meaning, and present it to DNAZone as another kit for teachers to use. Approved with further testing, Creature Feature has become a hit on modeling synthetic biology and has reached 106 people so far with a scheduled 570 more by December.
- Environmental Charter School Classroom Visit: 60 students from Pittsburgh; (12-13 years old)
- SAMS Group Visit: 7 students from around the United States; (17-19 years old)
- Franklin Camp: 7 students from across Pennsylvania; (12-18 years old)
- Pittsburgh Public Schools Science Professional Development: 32 science teachers from Pittsburgh; (Special Education, Elementary-High School)
- Scheduled: December 17th 2014, ~370 students from Miami, FL; (12-13 years old at Lamar Louise Curry Middle School)
- Scheduled: December 15th and 16th 2014, ~200 students from Miami, FL; (17-19 years old at the School for Advanced Studies-Kendall Campus
Totals: 106 labs completed (32 teacher labs); 570 labs scheduled and confirmed
Outer Panels
Inner Panels
While a strawberry DNA extraction is a typical classroom experiment for a beginner biology or lower-level science class, the iGEM team improved it to 1) streamline the timing of the experiment, and 2) reduce the mess-level that usually accompanies the filtration step of the experiment. We managed to get a messy 45-minute experiment to a mess-free 10-minute lab (in large classroom settings) using a syringe and cotton-ball. One surprising result was the abundant “purer” DNA yields due to the improved filtering method!
Future Impact: The iGEM-improved version of the strawberry DNA extraction has already reached multiple classrooms and science festivals for beta testing and will continue to do so thanks to DNAZone offering it as a kit for teachers to borrow. Under the guidance of the CMU iGEM team, 197 kids and teens performed this experiment, and 370 more are scheduled to by January 2015 (by us before official association with DNAZone). A Spanish version (translated by a CMU iGEMer) using local fruits in Bolivia is being implemented by a contact working at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos International orphanage and with this: SynBio Educational Series has gone international!
- Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day: 35 students from Pittsburgh; (12-15 years old)
- Environmental Charter School Classroom Visit: 60 students from Pittsburgh; (12-13 years old)
- Franklin Camp: 7 students from across Pennsylvania; (12-18 years old)
- Mellon Scavenger Hunt: 45 students from across the United States; (17-18 years old)
- YCC Chemistry Carnival Booth: 50 kids and adults visited CMU iGEM Booth from across Pennsylvania; (5-22 years old)
- Scheduled: October 17, 2014, Fall Festival Booth for the Montgomery iGEM Team in Montgomery, NJ with ~50 kids at booth (~200 in event attendance)
- Scheduled: October 25, 2014, Bolivia ~40 kids from Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos International orphanage; no demographic information due to the kids being wards of the country
- Scheduled: December 17, 2014, ~370 students from Miami, FL; (12-13 years old at Lamar Louise Curry Middle School)
- Scheduled: December 16, 2014, ~200 students from Miami, FL; (17-19 years old at the School for Advanced Studies-Kendall Campus
Totals: 197 labs completed; 660 labs scheduled and confirmed
Cynthia Morton, the associate curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, brought The Wheat Germ DNA extraction to our attention due to her routine usage of the lab. Seeing it as an experiment that can be done with a younger crowd, the CMU iGEM team worked on improving this lab using dyes to better see the DNA that precipitates into the isopropyl alcohol. The IvyTech iGEM team from Indiana, USA helped us achieve this by beta testing and figuring out the exact concentration needed for the optimal result. Thanks to their collaboration, this experiment was able to prosper and receive its own spot in the SynBio Educational Series, along with its routine usage in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History at outreach events.
Future Impact: The wheat germ DNA extraction allows for a younger group to perform the experiment without getting too messy. Cynthia Morton regularly guides this lab at the Carnegie Museum for Natural History with a crowd of about 500 community members (mainly kids) every other month. The iGEM- improved experiment will start to be used by November at the museum and we hope that it reaches a large crowd at its colorful debut and every other month afterwards. Once again, DNAZone will be offering the wheat germ DNA extraction as an alternative kit to the strawberry DNA extraction for teachers to borrow. With the iGEM team alone, 78 labs been conducted of this extraction.
- SciencePalooza Booth: 80 students from Pittsburgh; (10-14 years old)
- IvyTech iGEM Team Dye Testing: 8 labs from Indianapolis, IN (Peers)
Totals: 88 labs completed
Taylor Canady, a chemistry graduate student, created a DNA modeling kit in conjunction with Genoa Warner, which was quite successful with students and teachers around Pittsburgh. The iGEM team was approached to physically assemble the kits and provide instructions to accompany them when they are implemented in classrooms. The outreach duo wrote and created 12 different small flip-card sets that have four categories and three levels of difficulties for the teachers to use with the children as they see fit!
Future Impact: Taylor’s DNA Hybridization Kit has already won the 2014 Carnegie Science Award and been at the hands of 132 kids and teens. For Taylor, the moon-shot goal is create a larger-scale operation with a broader distribution of the kits to go across America, possibly accompanying science textbooks as a supplemental kit for teachers, but his mind is open to whatever falls his way. With the instructions from the CMU iGEM team, DNAZone will distribute these kits to any classroom in Pittsburgh, PA that wishes to borrow them for educational purposes.
- Workshops, events, professional development, classroom visits: 125 students
- Franklin Camp: 7 students from across Pennsylvania; (12-18 years old)
Totals: 132 labs completed
