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The lab open day is an annual activity in our school held in May. This year, on May 18th and 19th, we opened our lab to welcome the public from all Hefei City and even far from Xi'an City to know what we were doing and what genetic engineering and iGEM are. We organized the following activities:
1. Introduce the daily laboratory apparatus to the kids and students such as centrifuge, vibrator, PCR Instrument, high pressure steam sterilization pot, incubator and etc. We explained the mechanism of some of them and we were glad to see some middle school students caring about the working mechanism of centrifuge. So we continued teaching them more about the physical knowledge in it and it felt really pretty good to share them with our lose and gain and enlighten the kids who interested in science.
2. View microscope and anatomical lens: we collected some fresh flowers and leaves as well as cell slider including our Caulobacter crescentus and our staffs taught the kids how to use a microscope to observe the micro scale world and guide them to carefully dissect the flowers with tweezers. Many kids in China still were lack of opportunity to get in touch with the real science, which they could only read and learn from books. Consequently, we hoped this activity to trigger their motivation to not only think carefully but do meticulously
3. Class for kids: we exquisitely prepared a presentation specifically for kids to introduce to them the basic knowledge of DNA and genetic engineering with simple words and lovely pictures. We are surprised to know that children know the name of DNA, while they almost misunderstand the essence of DNA. So we instructed them about the scale, location, function, discovery and shape of DNA based on history and research. Besides, genetic engineering was also introduced using chocolate biscuits as example. We wished kids possess a memory about the mechanism in biological world and the seed sowed by us could prosper in the future. :)
4. Fold It! Well it is a game invented by Baker Lab from Washington University and introduced by 2010 Washington iGEM. We introduced the game to the public, especially high school or college students, which turned out to be a delighted success. Even the students who have little background of molecular biology are capable of understanding the best structure of proteins in some optimums. When the students knew that the structure of a reverse transcriptase (RT) in HIV, on which scientists had been working for more than fifteen years, was solved by a player in ten days, we saw their great ambitions to participate in solving global problems in the realm they are good at and intrigued in. Well, this was why we held it!
5. The Panel session: This session is almost for students and adults to let them know iGEM, establishment and history of our team built in 2007 and future of synthetic biology and biological technology. Since the public in China recently is concerned about GMO severely, we want to directly and briefly introduce to them the genetic engineering technology and let them judge whether the GMO is safe for our daily requires with our lead tip. We tried our best to landfill the gap between the fast developing science and puzzled people even if we finally managed to influence few. We still believe few can influence more with their constructive suggestion and going into action so that one day people in China, even in all over the world, will go forward with science shoulder by shoulder.
