As members of the Macquarie iGEM team 2014, we believe that we should communicate our research at every opportunity available. Macquarie University Open Day 2014 offered a fantastic platform for open dialogue between the undergraduate researchers and the general public. Open day has thousands of visitors annually ranging from prospective students, families and alumni as they take the opportunity to freely explore the university grounds, facilities and research being done.

What happened on Open Day 2014?

The Macquarie iGEM team arrived early in the morning of 13th September 2014 to set up a range of especially designed fun activities that helped the public better understand our research. The day was an immense success, with prospective science students – of all ages - fascinated by the work that was being done by the iGEM team. Many individuals stayed for up to an hour and even came back after the day's events to find out even more!

Why were these activities useful to our team?

The activities were designed to supplement the understanding of our project and Synthetic Biology in general. Whilst the participants found our activities fun and informative. Having an open dialogue with people from different walks of life, helped us to understand how the general public views Synthetic Biology, and what sort of concerns they had regarding our project and Synbio research in general. Such concerns ranged from issues regarding safety to morality of research, and helped our team understand how we can better address the concerns of the general public whilst communicating our research. Besides, an entire day of being able to tell hundreds of people about our research was a rewarding and satisfying experience in and of itself!

Can future iGEM teams adapt these fun activities for their own Outreach programmes?

Of course! We believe that these simple activities allowed the users to better grasp the techniques used in Synthetic Biology research. The interactive nature of the activities meant that the public were better informed of the techniques used in Synthetic Biology research, and hopefully it also managed to eradicate some of the irrational concerns associated with such research. The Macquarie iGEM team 2014 believes that in future, other iGEM teams can adapt the different activities we designed and use them for their own outreach activities. The activities were designed to be fun, easy to set up and very informative. Detailed instructions on how to set up and run these activities can be found attached.

So, what were these activities?

One of the first activities was “Design your DNA”. The participants were given a DNA sequence and they were required to build a DNA model from a kit based off of that sequence! Our team members Eddie and Christopher were there to explain the basics of DNA synthesis and how making DNA from scratch forms the basis of Synthetic Biology research! The photo shows Eddie and Christopher holding a DNA model made by one of the participants at the end of the day! Chlorophyll Chromatography was the second activity off the rank and proved to be a fantastic introduction to our chlorophyll based experiment. Never before had so many happy faces been seen as our participants had the chance to crush leaves to mush in their pestle and mortar. A basic paper chromatography experiment was run with acetone, as our solvent, showing the separation of the four main green pigments found in green plants, including our elusive chlorophyll a. The “Restriction Relay” was another game we designed. The purpose of the game was to inform participants on how restriction enzymes work, and how restriction enzymes are involved in different aspects of Synthetic Biology research. The game gave its players the opportunity to do as they attempted to find matching cuts on a larger-than-life DNA sequence with their restriction enzymes. If only our restriction enzyme digests were this simple! The game was an immense success, with one first year molecular biology student commenting that it made her understand her coursework better! As another, simpler example of how we are able to manipulate bacteria, artistic fluorescent E. coli plates were put on display. Alice might have had a bit too much fun with these, attempting to draw the Macquarie University logo and love hearts. Can you guess the rest? And lastly for a bit of fun (because who doesn't like a mess to clean up at the end of the day!), the Magic Milk experiment gave a colourful demonstration what surface tension does and why it is important to have protective fabric on your lab bench.