Team:HKUST/Human Practice

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Revision as of 08:17, 22 August 2010


Team: HKUST

Synthetic Biology Workshop

To promote better understanding of synthetic biology by the general public and arouse students' interest to integrate a broad variety of science discipline in their science study, we have organized a summer Synthetic Biology Workshop in July 19-23, 2010 at our university. This Synthetic Biology Workshop was coordinated by our instructors, Sun Wong and King Chow, while we all participate as tutors throughout the week. The workshop aims to bring 25 high school students from F.4 to F.6 (equivalent to grade 9-12) to look into the future of biological research using synthetic biology as a platform. These students recommended by their science teachers all came with bright eyes and enthusiastically engaged in the five-day activities. Even though we had two days risking a direct hit by the Typhoon Chanthu, red signal of heavy rain, the determination of the students and tutors was un-deterred. People stayed on and finished a productive learning journey for the tutors and the tutees.

In this five days workshop, we focus on the exploration of science and engineering and their integration. We have organized daily lectures covering various aspects of synthetic biology, from the introduction of different applications of synthetic biology, concepts of Biobricks, basic molecular biology techniques for plasmid construction, PCR amplification of DNA for the subsequent manipulation, discussion about device and system design, and mathematical modeling using software, etc. Participants have done some direct quantification in a gene expression study. All these topics were accompanied by hand on experimental work dispersed into the daily schedule running from 9:00am to 5:00pm.

There are also two sessions that are worth highlighting. We have group projects led by students themselves. They started their own "iGEM project by design" and came up with a presentation at the end of a day and a half. We were all surprised to see how quickly our high school students picked up the ideas and gave a number of interesting design proposals within these two days. Their presentations were filled with enthusiasm and proposed topics spanned from using algae to make biofuel, to using bacteria for targeting cancer cells for treatment. We also had a project using fecal bacteria to absorb carbon dioxide to improve the green house effect – it would be a good idea if we can all tolerate the smelly discharges. The second highlight was a discussion on social ethical impact of biotechnology and synthetic biology.

In the discussion, we were very surprised that students are in fact more receptive to these new ideas and the applications of synthetic biology. In general, as long as the new development is helping the advancement of our ability to cope with medical problems, environmental issues or energy crisis, students were very supportive to have them further developed.

Exciting time flies, and the workshop that was prepared for a few months ended with a sharing sessions filled with drinks, chips, clicks of the camera and of course good memory of the participants about our enthusiastic group of iGEM team members. Who knows, they may be our future iGEM team member next year!

Photos!