Difference between revisions of "Team:Georgia State/Engagement"

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<h3> Interactions in Biological Systems: What are they up to? </h3> 
 
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                                <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/3/37/T--Georgia_State--bhammer.jpg" align="left" hspace="20" class="spacing-b" alt="">
 
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                                <p class="last">We hosted a lecture by microbiologist Dr. Hammer. Dr. Hammer studies cell signaling in the bacterial pathogen Vibrio cholerae, and during his talk, Dr. Hammer discussed how he uses genetic engineering for his research. His lab studies microbial interactions at scales that span genes and genomes, regulatory networks, cells, populations, and communities. Harmful and beneficial bacteria are genetically encoded with regulatory networks to integrate external information that tailors gene expression to particular niches. Bacteria use chemical signals to orchestrate behaviors that facilitate both cooperation and conflict with members of the communities they inhabit. His work focuses on the waterborne pathogen Vibrio cholera, which causes the fatal diarrheal disease cholera in humans and also resides in aquatic settings in association with other animals and surfaces like crab shells and zooplankton molts composed of chitin.</p>
 
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<h3> CRISPER, GATTACA, and the end of the world! </h3> 
 
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<p class="last">Arri Eisen is a Professor of Pedagogy in biology and in the Graduate Institute for Liberal Arts; he is also the Teaching Coordinator for FIRST, a National Institutes of Health-supported
 
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postdoctoral fellowship program in research and teaching. Dr. Eisen received his undergraduate
 
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degree in 1985 in biology with honors from UNC-Chapel Hill and his PhD in Biochemistry from
 
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UW-Seattle in 1990. In addition to being on the Center faculty, Arri Eisen is a Professor of
 
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Pedagogy in Biology and in the Institute for Liberal Arts; he is also the Teaching Coordinator for
 
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FIRST, a National Institutes of Health-supported postdoctoral fellowship program in research
 
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and teaching, and a leader of the Emory Tibet Science Initiative, which has been working over
 
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the last decade with the Dalai Lama to educate Tibetan monks and nuns in science. Dr. Eisen
 
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received his undergraduate degree in 1985 in biology with honors from UNC-Chapel Hill and his
 
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PhD in Biochemistry from UW-Seattle in 1990. He has been teaching at Emory since then and
 
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joined the Center in the late 90’s where his main responsibilities now include teaching in the
 
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Center&'s Master of Arts in Bioethics and in Emory's Master of Science in Clinical Research
 
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programs. Dr. Eisen publishes in the peer-reviewed literature in science, science education, and
 
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bioethics, as well as in the popular literature. His most recent book is The Enlightened Gene:
 
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Biology, Buddhism and the Convergence that Explains the World. Dr. Eisen spoke about
 
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CRISPR technology and the future of creating human babies without certain medical conditions
 
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and specific preferred traits.</p>
 
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<div class="featured-blocks"> <h2><i><font style="text-transform: none;">Our Synthetic Biology Club hosted a speaker series on campus during the spring semester.</font></i></h2></div>
 
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<br>
 
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<h3> Learn to Engineer Bacterial Biosensors! </h3>
 
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<p class="last">The primary focus of Dr. Styczynski research is the experimental and computational study of the
 
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dynamics and regulation of metabolism, with ultimate applications in metabolic engineering,
 
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biotechnology, and biosensors/diagnostics. He spoke of the importance of micronutrient
 
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deficiencies and the importance of having an accessible and affordable way to measure
 
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deficiencies. Micronutrient deficiencies are a significant healthcare concern across the globe.
 
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Significant even in some developed nations, micronutrient deficiencies are more severe in the
 
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developing world and locally in the wake of major disasters. These conditions, though easily
 
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treated, remain a problem because they are often difficult to recognize and diagnose, requiring
 
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lab tests that are prohibitively expensive in both material and human resources for those in
 
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developing or remote areas. As obligate consumers of the same micronutrients, bacteria possess
 
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cellular machinery to control intracellular micronutrient levels and have corresponding
 
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regulatory mechanisms to respond to varying concentrations in their environment. His lab is
 
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developing a novel medical test based on bacterial sensors using designed genetic circuitry to
 
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direct existing or minimally engineered cellular machinery to trigger specific changes in color in
 
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response to defined micronutrient levels. Such a test would be cheap, requiring no complex
 
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equipment and minimal medical training to administer and interpret. This would obviate the
 
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logistical problem of laboratory access and sample transport in remote and low-resource
 
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environments, allowing on-site diagnosis of micronutrient deficiencies in the populations most at
 
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risk.</p>
 
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Revision as of 14:18, 31 October 2017

"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world."

Louis Pasteur

We were requested to come back to ASF for 2017 due to how successful our Bio Brick activity was the previous year. We provided children and parents alike with a better understanding of the goals, applications and importance of synthetic biology by utilizing the bio brick activity and the glow fish display. This year, we educated many students and parents on synthetic biology and how to create a BioBrick construct using legos. The BioBrick activity utilizes colorful lego pieces to explain to attendees how to create a biobrick. This process involves selecting a plasmid base, promote sequence, ribosomal binding site and a coding sequence. This year used glow fish to relate how fluorescent proteins are utilized in real life. Glowfish are technically GMO’s that are appreciated in everyday life as a result of introducing the coding sequence from jellyfish and put it into the embryo of fish to produce a fluorescent glow. We also took some time to explained previous iGEM projects and their benefits to society. Lastly, we gave out a survey to get a better understanding of how many people are aware of the properties and benefits of CBD oil

GCDHH

Over the summer the Georgia Center of the Death and Hard-of-Hearing (GCDHH) reached out to our GSU iGEM team to learn about synthetic biology and how they could be a part of the researching world. Without knowing how to approach the obstacle of communicating with one another, we reached out to our Department of Education to find out the best way to present our information to the incoming students. Putting the guidelines we received, we hosted a successful open lab day for the GCDHH students. We had interpreters signing as we were explaining the basics of our lab and the undergraduate research that iGEM has to offer. When we initially agreed to hosting the students, we had no idea how much it would impact our view of synthetic biology. We believe that the knowledge and experience we gain from being a part of iGEM should be accessible to everyone that has an interest. Furthermore, we have created our presentation to be more accessible and have gotten an opportunity to learn sign language.



Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club

For one of our outreach activities, the members for the iGEM team visited the salvation army boys and girls club. Here we had the pleasure of meeting with the young and curious minds. The day began with meeting all these young scientists and introducing our team and the agenda for our meetup.

Our basic idea was to spark interest and enthusiasm into these young minds and help them learn the importance of science in our daily life and, why it is important to the community. The meetup began with the team explaining our 2017 iGEM project in a very simple and elementary format for the kids to relate. After the explanation the team gave an elaborate breakdown of how our project can be explained and be understood in a more hands on manner using Legos. The Legos were used for the sole purpose of explaining how various BioBricks are integrated into our project.

The activity was wrapped up with a quick Q&A session between the students and out team where they were asked about their thoughts and reflection on how the activity shaped their understanding and if they would be interested in joining the sciences in their future endeavors or not. The meeting was finally concluded with our team handing out the fruit snacks for the kinds and thanking them for their time and patience to help us work with them.