Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/HP

Now let’s start with a brief review about the huge work we did to diffuse the information about synthetic biology and in the iGEM contest itself. On March we started giving away talks in junior high-schools nearby the urban area of Monterrey, with the main purpose of make conscience among young people about the importance and uses in daily life of synthetic biology; about 300 students attended those talks. Then we realized the interactive exposition called “The synthetic biology tunnel” originally created by the iGEM UANL team in 2012, during one month we carried on 40 tours through this tunnel, students aged between 6 and 17 years old joined us in this adventure, where they showed a lot of interest in the topic, and also they wanted to learn more about it. We organized a rally called “Synthetic Rally 2.0” in which we used physical activities to explain to approximately 150 students how the synthetic circuits work, their main parts, and also their applications. One of our main objectives during this project was to transmit information about synthetic biology and genomic sciences even to kindergarten kids, that is why we also made activities for them like tales related to that topics and also coloring plates, so they can understand this topic since an early age, an a new scientist may emerge.

Within our activities of broadcasting is also the delivery of advertising within the university campus, where more than 900 leafleted among students and teachers of different faculties. Some notes of media delivery are also written to take it to a local newspaper and have a longer range. Thus we also a Facebook page to share various notes and articles about synthetic biology to our colleagues and friends, reaching an approximate 400 likes. It is important for the team to follow with the participation of the school for the next year, which is why we organize also some informative talks to the following members of the iGEM2014 team.

Given the importance of our project in the realization of a model for future application in transgenic plants, we conducted a survey of its acceptance in our metropolitan area, for this reason, we conduct an interview to a farmer who cultivated potato in the rural area of Galeana, causing a positive impact. This led us to conduct interviews to some people of the population to know your opinion about the transgenic food, where approximately 2,000 people gave their opinion. Our interest was such that we continue analyzing the view of these people on the controversial subject of transgenic in our area and country, so we could make our own conclusions concerning the subject compared to past authors works. Also we caused impact in government level because the Mayor of Garcia, Nuevo Leon and two state representatives met with members of the team to learn about the project, its functionality in the region and discussed the way to promote in the community as well as new ways of providing synthetic biology support for this type of new sciences.

Finally, Televisa Monterrey and Multimedios Television important communication centers for more than 50 years at the regional level, carried out some reports to show society in general the IGEM competition. These reports will be seen on television by the inhabitants of four states in the north of the country and hundreds more over the internet.