Team:Fatih-Medical/Human Practice

Human Practice

We realize that we became a member of the Synthetic Biology family by participating at the iGEM competition.Thus, we carry the responsibility of ensuring the well understanding of iGEM and this new scientific branch. For this purpose, we made numerous presentations for students of different age groups and academists and discussed with them about Synthetic Biology and its future. Amoung our audience, we have achieved a great interest and found a considerable number of participants for our survey. We hope that the data we’ve collected will guide us throughout our way to Synthetic Biology in the future.
In order to show how funny and perfect team we can be besides our lab work, we made a film where we introduce our team and location. As it is a very important issue to ensure the continuation of the interest especially of the youth to SynBio, we supported and worked 2,5 months with the highschool Team AUC Turkey which participated the first time at iGEM this year. By doing this, we hope to have brought SynBio closer to youngers. Additionally, we prepared a useful notebook for all iGEMERs, which contains information about this years teams, their projects and short comments for each of the projects: The Secret Book of Fatih Medical.

We were invited to the science meeting conducted every week in one of the leading research centers, Dışkapı Education and Research Hospital. After presentations of actual science projects prepared by specialists and researchers from different disciplines, we introduced iGEM and explained our our project. We brought Synthetic Biology to the agenda under the iGEM title. We tried to explain it by the means of concretizing our own studies. After our presentation we answered the questions about Synthetic Biology and our project and took notes of the commentariesaudience. We got really helpful advises about our project and the risks and problems we may encounter during our experiments. Further, we conducted our survey. After estimation of commentaries and survey results we conclude that we have left a positive impression about iGEM and Synthetic Biology. Then we visited their advanced laboratories and animal testing centers within a hospital and found an opportunity to learn about different methods used in their studies. They notified that they could help us with experiments and provide us technical support if we need. In the evening we participated to the dinner served in the animal testing center. In the friendly atmosphere we continued the discussion with professors and found an opportunity to take answers directly from the specialists. With a mutual intensive and effective discussion we could successfully complete our first introducing experience.

After analyzing this year’s projects at iGEM, we thought of ‘’If only there were short and concrete abstracts of these studies’’ and decided to put it into practice and made the Secret Book of Fatih Medical.

Our 2011 Fatih Turkey iGEM team did introducing presentations at various high schools. One of those shools; Ahmet Ulusoy high school participated in iGEM HS as AUC Turkey team and returned with iGEMers prise from America. This year AUC Turkey attended our Fatih Medical’s educational meetings. These guys; taking a huge interest in Synthetic Biology and iGEM studies, accompanied us and shared the same laboratuary while doing experiments and other research processes. They continued their studies and learned a lot especially under the consultancy of our team member Mustafa Semih Elitok. The award recieved as a result of intensive work delighted us at least as them. We hope that in next years we will hear of them with more wonderful news.

We began our presentations about iGEM and our project during our lab works to domestic and foreign guests who visited our university. Our first opportunity to address a large audience with our project we had in Dışkapı Education and Research Hospital. There, we encountered interesting questions about iGEM and our project from specialists from various disciplines and we could also find answers to important points where we had some doubts. In the first week of the academic year we introduced iGEM to the newly came 1st grade students. During this presentation we had the chance to introduce the projects of the iGEM Teams Frankfurt and Freiburg 2012. While answering the questions about our project we also conducted our survey. At the end of our presentations there were generally many young students who were very motivated for synthetic biology and wanted to be a part of the next iGEM Team. So, we hope to have woken great interest in all the young minds.

To form an idea about the awareness, the general view on synthetic biology and the confidence in its products and as a chance for the introduction of iGEM, we prepared a survey that includes 10 questions. To share this survey with as much as possible number of people we translated it into English, Turkish and German. For those who don’t possess enough information about SynBio we wrote a short and concrete report about development of SynBio, its study fields and iGEM. We applied this survey through the Internet and directly distributed it in different periods of time. We also applied it to 1st, 2nd and 3rd year medical students. As a result of our collaboration with Team Frankfurt and Team Freiburg 2012 iGEM we got the chance to disseminate our survey in their universities with their help. Using different social networks, we tried to reach people out of genetics and health interests. We estimated survey results with SPSS and Microsoft Exel programs.