Education and promotion of environmental issues are part of the objectives of iGEM. As students ourselves, we the PuiChing_Macau team wishes to make synthetic biology more reachable by the community and educate more people on the field.
1. Continuous extracurricular course that focuses on iGEM-based synthetic biology
With support from our school, we have established a iGEM-oriented course in synthetic biology as an extracurricular activity about since November 2021 every Saturday afternoon.
In this course, we aim to disseminate methods to solve social problems with genetic engineering. Students can learn about knowledge related to synthetic biology, as well as have the opportunity to perform some experiments at our school laboratory. Moreover, modeling and website programming are taught within the course. To strengthen our students’ abilities, we have also been inviting experts from different fields from time to time to give online and offline lectures for our students.
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In this course, students were taught with in-depth information on synthetic biology and experimental techniques. Not only do students learn useful knowledge on the topic, but they can also put what they have learnt into practice. In the past year, students have done experiments like western blotting in our school laboratory. To validate the attendants’ learning progress and consolidate their knowledge, pop quizzes are cooperated in the course. With the training over the course of one year, students are now able to educate primary 5 to primary 6 students with the basics of synthetic biology. Through the classes, we are also looking for leaders who are interested in synthetic biology and prepare them for the future iGEM projects.
The course plan is shown below:
| Date | Topics | Content |
|---|---|---|
| December 2021 (4/12, 11/12) | iGEM Introduction and Basic Molecular Biology | iGEM Competition Introduction, Cell structure, transcription factors |
| January 2022 (8/1, 15/1, 22/1) | Synthetic Biology Concept and Basic Experiment Skills | Synthetic Biology Concept & Basic Experiment Skills |
| February-March 2022 (12/2, 19/2, 19/3, 26/3) | Project Brainstorm | Project-related content |
| April-May 2022 (2/4, 14/4, 23/4, 7/5, 14/5, 21/5, 28/5) | Team formed and further proposal | Selecting team members and discuss proposal |
| June-August 2022 (4/6, 23/6, 29/6, 6/7, 16/8) | Experiments in Lab and Organize Outreach Events | Leading by old team members to hold events, learning advanced lab skills |
| September-October 2022 (3/9, 5/9, 10/9, 12/9, 17/9, 24/9, 27/9, 8/10) | Competition Final Stage | Writing essays, writing wiki pages |
2. Delivering talks and workshops about iGEM and synthetic biology
Nowadays, zero carbon has been a hot topic, and people have become more aware of the importance of protecting our world. To further promote the concept of environmental protection, we held a terrarium workshop in June. During the workshop, we explained what hydroponics is and how it works. We wished to spark their interest in genetic engineering, so we introduced what iGEM is and some basic knowledge of synthetic biology. We then instructed the attendees to create a terrarium themselves and inspire them to learn by getting their own hands on the equipment.
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