Presentation to NEWBio Teachers - Penn State Center for Science and the Schools
The purpose of NEWBio is to help train high school science teachers from around Pennsylvania on new initiatives in biology. The program is a week long workshop where teachers are exposed to the many areas of biology in a variety of ways. The week is spent listening to talks led by professors and groups, exploring the campus, and ultimately making new lesson plans for the school year. The iGEM team is a great asset to this program, as we can provide the teachers with information in a way that students would enjoy and understand. This is also a great experience in learning how to better discuss our iGEM projects and present to groups of people who may know little about the subject.
Here we were able to show these teachers ways that they can explain synthetic biology to their students. These are easily reproducible activities and are fun, too!
Engineering a Metabolic Pathway
In this simulation, colored beads were poured through each set of clear tubes. The beads represented chemicals or molecules entering a pathway which would alter them. The tubes represented the pathways which consisted of different genes being expressed at different levels. The first scenario represents a properly engineered pathway where the output of both genes is similar. This model allowed the beads to flow through the tubes with a constant pace. Our second scenario represented what can happen when a gene in the pathway is over-expressed. Here, the first gene was expressing at almost double what the second gene could take in. This caused the beads to build-up in the first tube while only allowing a small amount through the rest of the pathway. The third scenario shows a missing gene or a gene knockout situation. This pertains to the Biodexification project in how we are identifying the necessary genes for the HMF pathway to function in E. coli. When beads were poured through, the bottom tube did not receive any as they were not "metabolized" and in the correct form due to the missing gene.
Assembling a Plasmid Activity
This activity explained individual parts needed to make a functional plasmid and how they are used in the processes of transcription and translation. The group was given an handout of definitions of each part and, with our help, were able to put each part where it belongs.
Presentation to Science-U High School Students
Central Dogma Relay
This presentation was to 30 high school students about genetic engineering. ScienceU is a program through the Eberly College of Science at Penn State and the goal is to reach out to kids in the community and provide a learning opportunity for them to spark ingenuity and a passion for science. The camp that we presented at was a week long program called "Science Leadership Camp" where high school kids of different ethnic backgrounds were able to come together and learn about possible career paths in STEM type jobs. A small portion of our 80 minute presentation focuses on an activity called Central Dogma Relay.The goal of this activity was to get kids moving and understand how DNA codes for proteins. They were given a coding sequence (white) the complementary strand codons (blue) the mRNA codons (green) and the amino acid (orange). We reversed engineered sequences of DNA so that the amino acid strand would spell things like "Penn State" and "Science". We received a lot of positive feed back and were offered the opportunity to present again in the fall as part of ScienceU's STEM showcase.
Engineering a Metabolic Pathway: ROUND 2
Similar to what Emily and Ashlee did with the teachers, we took this activity and used it for high school age kids. As the second part of our presentation, we talked about how we designed our project and the different aspects that are important when you are thinking about a plasmid. This was a little more technical, but the kids caught on very quickly and every group was able to construct their own plasmid. I think that this reinforces the idea that this is a quick activity that teachers can take to the classroom and use to teach their students about genetic engineering.
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