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Team:Sheffield/outreach
From 2014.igem.org
Introduction                                    15:00 - 15:05                            We introduced ourselves and what we                                                                                          do to the students.
Synthetic biology presentation                  15:05 - 15:25                            Our presentation consisted of:
                                                                                           What is synthetic biology?
                                                                                           How the BioBrick registry works
                                                                                           Examples of previous iGEM projects
Group work activity                             15:25 - 15:35                            We asked the students to divide                                                                                          into groups of 3/4 to brainstorm                                                                                          about problems they would solve                                                                                          with synthetic biology.
Feedback                                        15:35 - 15:40                            One member of each group explained                                                                                          the ideas they had discussed back                                                                                          to the class.
"Fatberglars" presentation                      15:40 - 15:55                            We gave a presentation of our project                                                                                          to the students, consisting of:
                                                                                           The problems caused by fatbergs
                                                                                           How we are solving this problem
                                                                                           The social/ethical ideas we                                                                                            considered in our project
Q&A session                                     15:55 - 16:00                            We answered questions posed to us by                                                                                          the students.
Our introductory presentation aimed to inform the students about what synthetic biology actually is. We provided a basic overview of how bacteria could be transformed to provide useful products, how the BioBrick registry worked, and how synthetic biology can be used to create novel solutions that could be used by communities all over the world. The students were then given an outline of what the iGEM competition is, why it exists and why they should participate in future.
Our introductory presentation aimed to inform the students about what synthetic biology actually is. We provided a basic overview of how bacteria could be transformed to provide useful products, how the BioBrick registry worked, and how synthetic biology can be used to create novel solutions that could be used by communities all over the world. The students were then given an outline of what the iGEM competition is, why it exists and why they should participate in future.
After our presentation the students divided themselves into small groups of 3 or 4 and were asked to imagine they were part of an iGEM team. We asked them to think the sort of difficulties they would choose to tackle, how they would solve this problem biologically and how they would take into account the ethical or social impact their project may face.
After 10 minutes of discussion one member of the group was asked to report back to the class. A wide variety of responses were received, and the students were particularly enthusiastic about using synthetic biology for medical purposes and to solve their own practical problems.
In the final section of the workshop we presented our project to the students. We explained how fats, oils and greases can lead to blockages in drainage and sewerage systems, and how we intended to solve this using lipase and keratinase. We explained our product to the students and gave an overview of all the different social and ethical ideas we explored during our iGEM project.
At the end of the session students asked many questions and were offered a cake.
