Team:Utah State/Outreach/EngineeringState

Engineering State

Our team received a great opportunity to teach high school students about synthetic biology and iGEM during the university sponsored program called Engineering State. Over 100 students from all around Utah, as well as a few from Idaho and one from Texas, participated in the workshop that we offered. The workshop included watching an introductory video called Synthetic Biology Genetic Engineering, a tour of the lab with demonstrations of the procedures used in cloning, and an activity where the students simulated the cloning process using paper rings as plasmids and scissors as enzymes.

The video taught the students the basics of synthetic biology and gave them an introduction into iGEM. The students were also taught about biological engineering and the potential it has in this ever changing world. For those who were interested, email addresses were taken so that further information could be emailed to them regarding biological engineering.

The tour of the lab consisted of several stations. The students rotated between stations, and demonstrations of the cloning process were given along with a discussion. At each station the students were asked to answer several questions about why each procedure was done and what it accomplished. The demonstrations helped describe the various procedures performed in our lab; these included: culture inoculation, DNA gel preparation and analysis, transformation preparation and equipment, agar plate inoculation and analysis, and the purpose for other useful instruments such as the Nanodrop and the fluorescent microscope.

The activity section of the workshop included handing out paper rings that were symbolic of bacterial plasmids. On each paper ring there were marks indicating enzyme restriction sites, genes of interest, and antibiotic resistance. The students were then taught how restriction sites can be cleaved to create an insert and a vector that can subsequently be cloned. The students were given a pair of scissors that were marked for a specific enzyme and shown that each enzyme can only cleave the DNA at its corresponding site. After the students finished cleaving their plasmid rings they were given tape that was marked as ligase so that they could glue their genes together. After the clones were completed a discussion was held with the students about the possibilities of synthetic biology and how they can become a part of this exciting field.

The hands on activity helped solidify the concepts to the students of the cloning process that they learned during the lab tour and from the video. Several students responded in a post workshop survey that they had gained a better understanding of what synthetic biology was and expressed excitement to continue their educations into biological and synthetic engineering.