Team:Newcastle/HP/transformandtranslate
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Humans’ ability to use language to communicate is arguably one of our most important defining characteristics. As an English Language and Literature student, I love investigating how and why we adapt language to different situations. When offered the chance to join Newcastle University’s 2017 iGEM team, I saw the opportunity to explore language use in a context I had yet to properly consider- in the world of science.
i-What?
iGEM: International Genetically Engineered Machine.
iGEM is a worldwide competition where teams from university, high school, and community labs use synthetic biology to address a real-world challenge (synthetic biology being an area of science where engineering principles are applied to biology, making new systems). Alongside lab work, where team members use genetic engineering techniques to create a biological system, it is also important to consider whether the project is ‘good for the world’, thinking of it in a social context. Ethics, safety, sustainability… in short, how does the project transfer from the lab to life? This area of iGEM is called Human Practises, also concerned with how the public engages with the project, and with synthetic biology as a field.
It’s easy to think of science and humanities as wholly disparate disciplines, but iGEM, and in particular the questions raised in Human Practises, provides the perfect opportunity to show how important it is for them to interact, and exhibit the benefits of a multidisciplinary approach. Our Newcastle iGEM team is made of students with really diverse backgrounds- biological sciences, computer science, agriculture… to name a few! As an English student, I can hopefully offer another new perspective.
Making Sense of Biosensors
For this year’s iGEM competition, team Newcastle are focusing on biosensor development, by creating sensynova: a modular and multicellular biosensor toolkit.
Biosensors are used as detection devices, reacting to certain environments and producing an output to indicate the presence of a substance. However, developing biosensors takes a lot of time and resources, and most do not make it to commercial use. By creating a toolkit, where devices can be combined and reused to make your own biosensor, Newcastle iGEM team aim to ameliorate these issues.
Dissecting the Dialogue
After learning about the gap between biosensor production and actual biosensor use, my thoughts jumped to language. Could a deficiency in communication between developers and users of biosensors could be a contributing factor to the lack of commercial success? Also, on a more general level, how is science communicated with the public?
This summer, while most of the iGEM team members work on transformation with DNA in the lab, I’ll be in the library focusing on how science is transformed from the petri dish to paper. As the cells that are cultured are undergoing the process of translation to make their proteins, I’ll be investigating what it takes to translate a science project into a commercial success.
Science communication is a really broad and interesting field- over the next few weeks I’m going to use techniques such as discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to study it, and discuss the research here.
By exploring the field of science communication, we hope to achieve a better understanding of how synthetic biology, and projects born from it, can impact the world!
