Team:USP-EEL-Brazil/Human Practices
Synthetic Biology Week
EEL-USP is a engineering university wich has the following graduating categories: environmental engineering, chemical engineering, biochemical engineering, physics engineering, material engineering and production engineering. Inside the University, CBSin is a student entity shaped mostly by biochemical engineering students, that is why members from CBSin have difficulties to transmit synthetic biology knowledge as a multidisciplinary science.
So members from CBSin organized to create an entire week dedicated to disseminate several subjects related with Synthetic Biology. During the Synthetic Biology week, our entity broght several professors, researchers and youngs entrepreneurs from others Brazilian universities to speak about Synthetic Biology, entrepreneurship, the maker movement (wich is a DIY growing movement from Brazil) and its importance for a society in constant changes. We aimed to show the University community (students and teachers) our work and mission!
Just build it
One of CBSIN's core missions is to develop technology and bring the academic community closer to society. To be able to count on public participation, we held the Just Build It (JBI) event. The JBI was one of the biggest events idealized by CBSIN together with Hack.Atomic, Synbiobrasil and the Free Hardware group:
Hack.Atomic:is a student entity from EEL-USP, established in 2016. Its mission is to bring the "Making" culture to the college environment through workshops held in partnership with other entities, as well as offering free introductory classes to the Arduino. This way, Hack.Atomic manages to bring to the engineering students problems related to the logic of programming and basic circuits that helps in the formation of an engineer.
Hardware Livre:is one of the largest group in Brazil formed by students of the University of São Paulo that promotes studies related to the areas of Free Hardware. They teach to use the technology involved in some devices and their applications in research are explored by undergraduate, masters and doctoral students.
Synbiobrasil:is one of the most relevant group of synthetic biology development in Brazil. Every week the platform offers meetings between undergraduate and graduate students from various science areas to discuss open science. The objective is to generate interdisciplinarity on problems that can be solved with bioengineering, emphasizing the approach of Synthetic Biology.
Therefore, during the event, students had access to arduino programming with Hack.Atomic, and then they were instructed by Free Hardware representatives to build lab equipment with cheap and affordable parts. Among the equipaments, we can mention: greenhouse, shaker, sensor of luminosity and water bath.
The Children’s Yogurt Day
According to World Health Organization, osteoporosis affects approximately Ten millions of brazilians, mainly related with calcium deficiency and ageing, and so the CBSIN made The Children’s Yogurt Day. Yogurt is originated from the milk fermentation and is known by its properties: Yogurt is rich in vitamins, minerals (mainly calcium), proteins, helps to lose weight, natural probiotic and can be easily used in a large range of culinary.
Everybody know that children has a big persuasive power, that is why CBSIN went to UNIFATEA (Centro Universitário Teresa D'Ávila) in order to teach children from different ages how to make a delicious homemade yogurt in a simple way, broadening some concepts of biology and talking about the importance of bacterias and microorganisms in ours lives.
Through this project we were aiming to propose a food education, instigate that children convince their parents to have healthier habits, we tried to instigate their curiosity and introduced them the concept of Synthetic Biology.
Partnership with AIESEC
"AIESEC is a global platform for young people to explore and develop their leadership potential. They are a non-political, independent, not-for-profit organization run by students and recent graduates of institutions of higher education. Its members are interested in world issues, leadership and management. AIESEC does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion or national / social origin.''AIESEC Official Website.
Aknowledging that AIESEC has similar values, mission and purpose, we decided to make a partnership with them. CBSIN requested AIESEC to give us the opportunity to participate in a class of children they teach, in order to introduce them some scientific experiments. AIESEC has a recognized work with low-income family, so most part of those kid are poor, thus they have to overcome a lot obstacles in order to get access to school, education and others basic social rights.
During the winter holidays, we dedicated some days to teach and demostrate some concepts of chemistry and biology. The kids had experienced how to make a sodium bicarbonate and vinegar volcano, how to measure ph with red cabbage, they learned what is DNA and how to extract it from fruits; and they learned how to fill ballon with vinegar and sodium bicarbonate.
Our partnership with AIESEC aim to approach science to children and instigate their curiosity for sciences!
Contraceptive Awareness
The feminist movement Enedina Alves Marques from EEL-USP, is a student entity that aims to discuss and fight for women's rights inside and out of the university. The movement fights against social oppression and brutal crimes against women, trying to bring equality between genders.
During project development, we learned the dangers of using contraceptive pills without the knowledge of its sides-effects. So we Researched datas, statistics and we found a relation between taking contraceptive pills and acquiring some diseases such as venous thrombosis, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, varicose vein and others.
Then, CBSIN made an event with Enedina Alves Marques entity in order to discuss and aware women and men about some topics releated with contraceptive pills. We focused in talking about health, importance of consulting doctors before using medications and we invited specialists to talk about others anticonceptive ways.
The Research Incentive Week
The research incentive week was an event organized by the Union of Chemical Engineering with the special participation of CBSIN. During this week, several lectures were made with researchers and professors talking about the importance of scientific research for the development of the political, social and educational scenario of Brazil.
At the event, teachers and students of scientific initiation were invited to open stands explaining the themes of their work, giving opportunities for recruiting interested students. In this sense, CBSIN had the opportunity to talk a bit about synthetic biology and present our project for IGEM 2018.
Because our project involves water and sewage treatment, we found important to get more information about how the sewage is treated in Lorena and how the tap water reach our houses. So our team went to the wastewater plant to learn about it, coincidentally this plant is not far from our university as you can see in the map below:
Basically Lorena extract pure water from deep water table, and treat its sewage with four treatment pool, two pools of anaerobic bacteria and the other two pools of facultative bacteria. Lorena sewage treatment is inspired in an Australian wastewater plant and this plant can handle quiet good Lorena sewage, and if pay attention the wastewater plant releases its effluent into the river named in the foto “Rio Paraíba do Sul”, it’s a very important river in this region of São Paulo. If you want to know a little more of how Lorena treat its water please watch the video:
Well so, our team went to publics squares once more to get the point of views from Lorena population and we tried to make them aware about the microcontaminants, wich is one of the focus of our project. We tried to interview both men and women from all ages, jobs and social class. Our interviewed public was mostly born in Lorena or was living there for more than 10 years so we could obtain trustful data about the population.
As you see in the statistics most people find very important water treatment (both for consumption and for environmental release). However, when our team asked them if they knew what were microcontaminants nobody could answer correctly (only some researches) and consequently nobody said that we should remove hormones from water. So as a focus of our project we talked to the people and told them about the Brazilian situation and consequences this microcontaminants has to human health, and we asked them if they thought of using GMO for treating water and most of them found it a good ideia!
