User:NehaBhat
From Hackteria
Who am I?
A bio-enthusiast with an inclination towards the world of art, I believe that there's an increasing need for artists who don't create art just for art's sake. After having majored in Biology in school, I opted for an education in art and design to discover the potential of a lesser acknowleged science (that being art) in mainstream science.
What do I aim to do?
With a penchant for writing and organising, from little safety pins to giant libraries, I hope to a part of the major revolution in education systems around the globe, which I hope to start! Ambitious? Whimsical? Maybe, but isn't it enthusiasm that makes the world go round?
Reaching me: neha.n.bhat@gmail.com
Idea-generation: Conveying ideas using non-textual tools: Creating a bacteria out of one's imagination
A bacteria programmed to reproduce proportionately to the level of liquid silver/Reactant A characteristic only to the Indian currency. A intolerance point will be identified beyond which the bacteria cannot reproduce and starts a process of self-destruction. Its like paying for a life. How far can money take us? Won't it all end in self-destruction? The graph depicts the relation between the reactant and the mass of the bacteria.It also illustrates the 'intolerance point'.
Thinking, seeking, doing:
Reflections from two days at NCBS:
I am learning. I am experimenting. More than that ‘upper’ stuff that I say I'm doing and all that I'm supposed to , I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before but always wanted to. From my school days, I’ve always been interested in biology and ‘doing things’ on my own. I absolutely detested the textbook method of learning and desired, passionately during those hours of rigorous memory-based learning, a space to understand science from through the ‘doing’ way. I longed for botany classes in the garden and learning through seeing .At the end of it all, I wanted to gain a mastery of over the lab. I wanted to overcome the morbidity of dissection and be the one who could do it the best. Like, complete control over something else’s life. Now, I don’t even understand why anything other than a member of the human species is referred to as ‘something’. You never call a dog ‘someone’.
These two days of seeing so much long-desired passion, being manifested, although through someone else’s reality is giving me a path to tread. It is making me imagine myself in the shoes of the biologists.
Somewhere, my understanding of the value of art seems to have diluted. Its not that I’m trivialising art in front of science, but I’m just a little lost as to where art ( actually, the commercial definition of it) seems to figure in science. Maybe it’s the constant interactions with fact-based people at NCBS, who seem to function on the power of proof. “Evidence that something works. Past-life theory isn’t a theory. Art is so subjective, its power-driven”.
This is making me question what I’m doing as a student of art. Its making me realise that my understanding of art hasn’t really progressed much in the one year I have spent in the field ,beyond what it was before Srishti.I know what an artist’s output can be, career-wise. But I feel, I’m not dwelling on the right questions. I know the larger picture but not enough. Unlike some biologists I have met, who can argue their opinion, I feel I lack the understanding to argue my opinions out. Some of my counterparts in the same field as me seem to be doing this very thing pretty well, and I need to learn from that.
A week into iGEM:
My previous concerns seem to be slowly fading away. Oh no, they're not gone and I hope they don't to, since they're what keep me thinking. But there are new concerns. Like can artists's really get away with 'whatever they want to do'? Avni's Chicken Kailedoscope just made me think about the whole big hoo-haa about what we're doing. I mean, democratisation of knowledge, really? Again, I have many takes on this. Maybe its my lack of 'one stream of thought' (owing to dipping my hands and feet in art,bio,design all together), but I agree and don't agree with that statement all together. This might have been just a ramble, but I thought it was worth typing down.
On Ethics and Art:
My main issue with the chicken was not the project itself but what happens to it after the span of that hour of presentation. Most art projects end up framed in a gallery and viewed by a select few over wine and cheese. But is that really the point of what we're trying to do?
As the synthetic biology industry hurtles into the future, civil society organizations are now asking if we shouldn't at least have widespread debate and legally-binding regulation before we rush into this great unknown?
Now this statement (from a Genetic-Engineering article) creates this extreme commercial view of the field. Will what we do also end up like this? Will research heads choose specific projects to convert it into another money-making mania in the hands of moneymakers? And are implementing laws the solution? I think not.
Getting our hands wet:
Doing simple experiments like extracting our DNA from saliva and fruit helped in enforcing some momentum in 'doing' as opposed to the week of ideating that we went through.
-Our Electrophoresis machine dosn't seem to work! (After 3 rounds of procedure-repeats, no satisfactory results!) This will be given to Navneet at NCBS tomorrow to see what an expert a do with it.
-Study a bacterial idea thoroughly and come up with a dummy model.
-Go to the registry and study the parts that need to make it.
Food for thought:
"Scientists creating new life-forms cannot be allowed to act as judge and jury," explained Sue Mayer, director of GeneWatch. "The implications are too serious to be left to well-meaning but self interested scientists. Public debate and policing is needed."
"Its like a book everyone is talking about but no one has read".
Learning through doing:
All that I have ever wanted to do in a biology I am learning to do. Those hundreds of pages of the biology textbook that I rote-learned in school without having even looked at a cell (other than probably, the ocassional onion peel) under the microscope are resufacing as I isolate,incubate,centrifuge and transform for hours together in a professional lab at a centre for breakthrough research!
Experiments failed:
Failure 1:
The plasmids we prepared all by ourselves, following procedures from a book (Yes, it was like cooking) turned out too less in concentration. Was it an error in our understanding or our handling of lab equipment, we still don't know and probably we never will. I feel like repeating that 3 hour process as many times as possible to achieve that perfect concentration.
However, I don't think that is such a negative thing after all. I can operate the centrifuge machine,the vortex mixer, micropipettes,the nanodrop all by myself.Unlike the initial absolute hesitation upon entering lab space, I am confident enough to handle professional procedures with the requisite guidance.
Failure 2:
So we continued the experiment with the plasmids prepared by Navneet and performed ligation all by ourselves. Since we thought dividing ourselves into groups of two or four won't lead to any greater results, we performed the whole procedure as one group. Probably the adage ' Too many cooks spoil the broth' proved true after all. However, it is also a fact that the chances of this experiment giving the required result is very low even in the case of practicing professionals!
The Wait:
Its been a slow week after the ending of our lysis experiment at NCBS. We're trying to work on things other than science parallely. However, as the beginning of our second year of college is approaching, I sense our group's energy dissipating.
There is an increasing lack of motivation, since we still dont' know where we are going and I don't think everyone understands that this is what the trial-and-error system of learning is all about. How we plan to coordinate cirriculum work and this project, is also proving to be a major challenge.
