Pipetting Workshop
Our iGEM team hosted a successful outreach event aimed at introducing a group of Year 7-10 students from Taiwan to the world of synthetic biology. The workshop began with a brief presentation on the University of Sydney, synthetic biology, and our project. We then moved on to a hands-on activity where the students learned to use micropipettes, creating vibrant pipette artworks in 96-well plates. This experience familiarised them with essential lab skills but also made the abstract concepts of synthetic biology more tangible and exciting. The students were visibly enthusiastic, and their active participation and questions suggests that we succeeded in sparking their interest in this field.
Reflecting on the event, we identified a few areas for improvements. While the activity was well-suited to the students' age and experience level, we could enhance engagement by asking more questions and providing extra time to explore fundamental concepts, such as the central dogma of biology. Additionally, offering more individualised guidance during the workshop could help ensure that students fully grasp the importance of certain techniques in synthetic biology. These changes would both improve the learning experience while deepening the student’s understanding and interest in synthetic biology.
St Luke's Grammar School Gel Electrophoresis Workshop
Our iGEM team brought synthetic biology into the classroom for Year 12 students at St Lukes Grammar School. A workshop was run for each of the 2 classes. The workshops began with an introduction to iGEM and synthetic biology, followed by some background on gene cloning before diving into our current research. We allowed the students to learn micropipetting, as performed in our pipetting workshop above.
To connect synthetic biology to their HSC syllabus, we spoke on the current research into Sickle Cell Anaemia gene therapy and CRISPR-Cas9 Gene editing technology. To practically get the students involved, we ran a gel electrophoresis with them - where they could use their newfound micropipetting skills to load the gel. We created a problem solving task with the gel by asking the students to determine if a child inherited sickle cell anemia from their parents (both carriers) based on the band pattern generated. Our samples failed to show clear bands on the gel, perhaps because we used a lower agarose concentration with smaller sample bands, or because the samples had been stored improperly, and had degraded. Nevertheless, the 1kb DNA ladders ran well, and physically demonstrated electrophoresis separating DNA fragments as they had been learning. The students were incredibly excited to perform and observe this experiment, even though the samples largely failed to show, and had a continuous stream of questions during the workshops. Some students even came to both workshops! For this reason we believe we successfully developed their interest in the field of synthetic biology.
Upon reflecting on the event for further improvement: the first workshop was an hour, and second two hours. The hour-long workshop was too short to cover everything in as much detail, which limited the students' ability to fully understand synthetic biology and our project. The second two hour workshop was much better, with higher levels of questions and interest into further synthetic biology applications.