Team:Heidelberg/Education

The Legend of Cellda

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Education

Synthetic biology for a brighter tomorrow

Experiment booklet

The best way to learn something is doing it on your own. This is why we wanted to let high school students get their hands on science and show them what a day of a synthetic biologist can look like.

We know that teachers are very busy, and we know about the difficulties or developing a whole new course programme, especially in fields like synthetic biology. For this reason only very few materials exist for high school students, which we find a pity. When we think back to our school days, we miss that part of biology. Not only the theoretical part, but how amazing would it be to get your hands on science already in school and experience the feeling of a real lab? Our goal was exactly this: Bring synthetic biology to high school students in a simple and tangible way. A problem we have stumbled upon was the poor lab equipment in schools. Moreover there were many iGEM teams who visited schools. However, we wanted to implement something more sustainable. We have noticed that there are more and more student research centres in more and more cities. This is an amazing development, because students can go there and try things out without being afraid of a bad grade. Another advantage: Labs in student research centres are usually very well equipped, at least good enough for our purpose.

So we decided to develop a 3-days course programme for high school students at student research centres. This includes a separate script for teachers and students, adapted to their needs. We tried to implement as many extra tips as possible for the students, so that they can avoid typical mistakes. For the teachers we included questions that help the students understand the experiments better, and solutions to these questions. On top we created accompanying material for teachers. There we explained the purpose of the experiments and the whole course programm. Also we wrote down all details for the course preparation, including the materials and where to find them. On top of this we provide extra folders with all the relevant DNA sequences needed in the course. With this we want to take as much work from them, so that they can focus on other things.

Also, we wanted to make everything as visual as possible, so that the students can relate to the topic which makes it easier for them to learn. Therefore, we implemented a small story and take them with us through our iGEM journey. This story has the name “Building blocks of life”.
Under this motto we introduce the students into different building blocks of life and encourage them to think of the reason for all the different unique properties of life and how to make use of this.
This leads to the topic of cloning. With our material we provide information on what cloning is, what it means and how it works in general. What we make them do is what we also did for weeks and months in the Wet Lab: PCR, colony PCR, gel electrophoresis, transformation and cloning.
We think it’s a great way for the students to try out commonly used methods in the field of biology and get first insight into the life of a scientist!

However, that much input at once can be overwhelming for students who never heard of all these things. Therefore we introduce them slowly to the topic and take small steps one after the other. On the first day we start with an overall course introduction, introduce the students to cloning and transformation and let them perform a transformation. On the second day the students will perform a PCR and Colony-PCR to learn the differences between these methods. Furthermore they will get to understand what they are used for. On the last day they will do a gel electrophoresis. With this, the students will learn how to analyze the results of the Colony PCR on the previous day.

Here we provide the experiment booklet for students, for teachers, and the accompanying material for teachers as a PDF download. Here we provide the experiment booklet for teachers, students and the accompanying material.

Get our experiment booklet! (English)
Get our experiment booklet! (German)
We would be glad if you could spread, reuse or remixe it, if you find it useful. When remixing and republishing we kindly ask for a proof of publication to igemhd@protonmail.org.

Science Slam

For science communication several aspects were most important to us: science communication needs to be easy and free to access for everyone and there should be an easy-going atmosphere in which people can learn something about science without even noticing it. One format that combines all these aspects and that we really enjoy is a Science Slam.

This is an increasingly known and popular format, in which speakers present their research in an entertaining and exciting manner to the audience. This audience is a broad one: Not only academics, but even people without much previous knowledge should understand the talk. This makes it quite challenging for the speaker! However, it is a great way to engage with the people because you can directly interact with them and see their reactions. Moreover, there is always a great atmosphere and space for exchange and getting in touch with each other.

Originally, we wanted to invite speakers from various teams to Heidelberg. However, considering the restrictions which are necessary to prevent the Corona virus from spreading, we changed our plans and converted the Science Slam into an online Livestream on our YouTube channel. Even though this is much different than a normal Science Slam we took it as a chance and new challenge. Like this, we had the possibility to let people from all over the world participate and engage with the iGEM Teams! We were extremely happy to see that people commented a lot and also used their chance to vote for their favourite Slam.

The internationality was enriching: We had guests from four teams in three different countries. The UNIL iGEM Team from Lausanne talked about how they plan to use engineered bacteria that produces a drug in a repetitive way to treat colorectal cancer. From the iGEM Team Manchester we learned that sunscreen can be dangerous for reefs because they can cause coral bleaching. The iGEM Team Imperial College introduced us to the topic of total lab automation. Finally, the winner of the trophy that evening was theiGEM Team from the Ashesi University in Ghana – or as they call themselves “Coast Busters” – who managed to combine the problem of plastic pollution with synthetic biology. What they won is not only the glory of being the winner team of that evening, but also a colourful mixture of different stickers and magnets, of course all iGEM related.

We were overwhelmed with the anticipation and positive reaction of the people. Even though no one attended the event physically, we felt like everyone learned something – which means for us: Goal achieved.
See the whole event here: