Team:TU Delft/13 October 2010 content

From 2010.igem.org

Emulsifier

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Today I completely messed up the experiment. Instead of adding IPTG for the protein production induction, I took X-Gal. Because of this small mistake the cultures turned completely blue! Although X-Gal probably also has some effect on the IPTG inducable promotor we decided that it was useless to continue, because we cannot compare the data anymore. Nothing else left to do than to redo the experiment :(.

"I am blue abedee abedi!"



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Human Practice: WT academie

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Today, the WT academie event took place in the Science Centre Delft. S&T Academy (WT academie) is a science and technology day at a university full of lectures, tours, workshops and demonstrations around a theme of science and technology, especially for (future) teachers in education. The goal is to inspire and fascinate teachers for the challenging opportunities that science and technology can offer to education.

iGEM contributed to this day by giving a workshop in cooperation with the Rathenau Institute. This workshop consisted out of two parts. In the first part, participants stepped into the iGEM world. They got the opportinuty to join our team and built their own BioBrick for oil degredation.

Participants were provided with a Parts Registry and a library of parts in the form of cards. In this way, they were challenged to think about how the various parts had to be combined.

There was room for discussion in the second part of the workshop. It was the opinion of the audience that counted! Who should determine how people deal with this science? The government? Companies? Or society? Do they really think synthetic biology is going to tackle global problems? Or do they consider it to be just a 'hype'?

A firm discussion on the regulation of synthetic biology was born. According to most, the application of this science should not only be in the hands of commerce. On the other hand, it was suggested that is not a good idea to only let the society decide on its fate. Fear of the unknown is a major challenge for many people. By being afraid of what may or may not happen, people may eliminate new science.