Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/HP

Now let’s start with a brief review about the huge work we did in diffusion of synthetic biology and in iGEM contest itself. On March we started giving away talks in junior high-schools nearby the urban area of Monterrey, with the main purpose to make conscience among young people about the importance and uses in daily life of synthetic biology; about 300 students attended those talks. Then we made an interactive exposition called “The synthetic biology tunnel” originally created by the iGEM UANL team in 2012, along 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 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 synthetic circuits work, their main parts, and 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 these topics as well as coloring plates, so they can understand this topic since an early age, and who knows, maybe 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. We too, created a Facebook page to share various notes and articles about synthetic biology to our colleagues and friends, reaching an approximate 400 likes were obtained. It is important for the current team to start interesting the new possible generation, which is why we organized some informative talks to the possible 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 conducted 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 general 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. We also caused impact in a 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 it 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 regional and national level, carried out some interviews to show society in general the iGEM competition and what our team was working on. These interviews where transmitted with the purpose of having four states in the north of the country and hundreds more over the internet, to be able to see this.