Team:Wisconsin-Madison/hpractice

• Team

  • Team Members
  • Advisors
  • Sponsors

• Projects

  • Engineering Limonene Production in E.coli
  • Translational Coupling Cassette (TCC)

• Parts

  • Translational Coupling Cassette
  • Negative TCC Control
  • Positive TCC Control
  • Codon-optomized LIMS1

• Modeling

• Protocol

• Safety

• Human practice

Outreach: James Madison Memorial High School

This year our iGEM team decided to combine the Human Practice requirement with helping another iGEM team. In order to do this, we began by visiting a local high school, James Madison Memorial. Over the length of a school day, we talked to all of the Advanced Placement biology classes about synthetic biology, iGEM and bioethics.

We spurred many interesting discussions, and brainstormed feasible project ideas that these aspiring synthetic biologists could pursue in the future. After our presentation, we also informed the classes that iGEM recently opened a high school competition division, and instructed any interested freshman, sophomores or juniors to contact us for guidance if they were interested in starting a team. To help other iGEM teams, we also created a standardized PowerPoint for any iGEM team to use at their own local high schools to introduce synthetic biology and iGEM. This powerpoint is available on our wiki here.

Shortly afterwards, we received an email from their captain saying that they had a group of approximately ten students who would be definitely interested in forming a team their following year. Throughout the summer, we emailed them back and forth, suggesting possible ways to kick off their team. Near the middle of the summer, we had 8 of them come into our lab and demonstrated some simple synthetic biology techniques. During this time, we also gave them a crash course on BioBrick cloning, and the timeline that goes along with it.

In addition we also introduced them to the parts registry, and emphasized its helpfulness in both learning about what specific parts do and what teams have done in the past.

As their school year started, one of our members facilitated a brainstorming session to help them start thinking about projects that would be both educational and feasible in their timeline. Recently, we have helped them find an advisor to help them figure out the logistics of starting a competitive team for this upcoming year. We continually try to check up on them and ensure that they are brainstorming, and think about their project, and will hopefully be able to advise them in the spring once they start experimenting. In addition, here is a public link to our powerpoint that any team can use if they desired to go and talk to a local high school: Public Link