Team:MIT/outreach

• ABOUT US
  Team Attributions
• BACKGROUND
  Alternative Splicing CRISPR RNA Binding Proteins REST
• PROJECT
  Guides and ASOs mKate-FF4 2 Exon mKate HBG 3 Exon mKate HBG 3 Exon Dual Fluorescence
• LAB WORK
  Parts/Improved Parts Protocols Notebook Future Work
• MODELLING
• HUMAN PRACTICES
  Integrated HP Public Engagement Collaborations InterLab
• AWARDS
  HP Silver HP Gold Education & Public Engagement Model Parts Collection

Public Engagement

Our team members participated in a series of outreach events, geared towards educating the public. We wanted to help people understand what synthetic biology and alternative splicing are, as well as the goal of our project. We wanted to get people excited about synthetic biology and how it can affect their lives in a positive way.

MIT Museum Exhibit

Our team spent an afternoon in July at the MIT Museum. We engaged with patrons in discussions about some synthetic biology topics and some of the topics from our project. We designed posters that conveyed these ideas in a way that anyone could understand, and we had hands-on activities to complement each station.

St Paul’s School Outreach

We spent a morning with rising high school seniors enrolled in a Molecular Biology course over the summer. The students had a fair background in biochemistry and genetics and so the goal of our 90 minute lesson was to introduce synthetic biology and our project. We hoped that at the end of this session, the students would have gained an understanding of synbio, biological circuits and artificial control of alternative splicing. To We challenged the students to think of a problem they’d like to address and how they could possibly use synthetic biology to reach a solution. They only had a few minutes, but they were still able to come up with some great ideas, such as telomere shortening to reach immortality, design germs that can eat plastic, creating gene drives that create ivory to prevent poaching elephants and designing cells to notify that brain cancer is developing.

BoSTEM Scholar’s Academy Panel

One morning, Ashley and Sannidhi sat on a panel session for the BoSTEM Scholar’s Academy. The students were from lower-income backgrounds and some of the schools they attended were under-resourced. The goal of the panel was for the panelists to make the students aware of the steps and well as the perseverance required to make their dream STEM career a reality.

BioBuilder Teachers’ Workshop

Our team was invited to speak at the BioBuilder Teacher’s Workshop and share our experiences of the iGEM journey.

InGenius Prep at Lab Central