Teaching Module "Synthetic Biology" for Highschools

Science in Action Students at Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium preparing vanilla pudding solution for fluorescence measurement.

In the course of our cooperation with the grade 9 biology-chemistry class at Kaiser-Karl-Gymnasium, a secondary school in Aachen, we developed a teaching module about “Synthetic Biology”. The scope of the module is 8 school classes 45 min. each. Topics include sources and exposure to microorganisms in our environment, antibiotic resistances, quorum sensing, fluorescence and measurement thereof, as well as the bio-molecular aspect of our iGEM project. To wrap up the module we did some career-exploration in synthetic biology and related fields.

The teaching module is suitable for the subjects biology, biology-chemistry and sciences. The students should have completed grade 8, and know about the central dogma of biology as well as protein biosynthesis. Because our work is going to be evaluated based on our wiki, we would like to take photos during the lessons. In order to publish the photos on our homepage and our wiki, we need a consent form signed by the students’ parents. If you, too, are interested in collaborating with our team write us an email at igem@rwth-aachen.de

The first time, we carried out this teaching module in cooperation with Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium. For each of the lessons we have recorded our experience in a blog entry.