Difference between revisions of "Team:EPF Lausanne/Practices"

Highschool students' visit

Start of the day

Since iGEM is encouraging young students to get into the lab, think about innovative ideas using Synthetic Biology we wanted to get this thinking into highschool students. To do so, we contacted three different highschools in our reagion. [insert name of highshcool], [insert name of highshcool] and [insert name of highshcool] gladly sent us students interested in biology and eager to find out about synthetic biology.

Indeed, we found out that, even if the level of biology is fairly high in Switzerland, the learned material doesn't include synthetic biology. Our goal for that day was that these students would have a new view of the field of biology and that even engineers should be interested in this field, that we can hack life!

Presentation

We welcomed the students with a presentation that had three parts. The first one was about iGEM, the modalities and principles of the competition, the number of participating teams, the contribution of each team, etc. The second part was about synthetic biology and, after introducing them about common lab techniques and procedures, we talked about the third part, our « BioLOGIC » project.

After the presentation we dispatched them into three groups for three different activities

As we wanted them to understand all the aspect of what a "classic iGEM summer" felt like we prepared three different activities :

mini iGEM

Lab immersion

Even the most renownd scientist started by pipetting water, this is why we prepared a few activites in the lab to let the students see how it is to work in the world of synthetic biology.[insert activities]

Ethics debate

Lastly, ethics is really important in the field of Sciences. The missuse of novel technologies is a matter that every scientist with integrity has to think about. To make the students reflect about actions and consequences we prepared an ethics debate during which we gave the students a role to defend. We gave them these roles because we wanted them to be able to think about another opinion and it was great to see them get into the role and having fun doing so. At the end of the debate we exited the roles and were pleased to see that what we did opened their eyes on different aspects concerning the responsability that we have concerning the research. [maybe talk about swiss votation system?]

Mini iGEM projects

Name	Description
Famousse	Famousse ("Mousse" means foam in french) is a gun that sprays an isolating material to fill walls. The fluid consists of bacterias that produce foam once in contact with oxygen and of yeasts that make CO2 holes in the foam. After a while, the foam solidifies and bacterias and yeasts die by apoptosis: the isolating material is finished.
RIDG pill	The RIDG pill (Régulateur intelligent Des Graisses or Intelligent Fat Regulator, IFR pill) is made out of bacteria that detect, once in the intestine, if the person suffers of obesity or anorexia thanks to hormone receptors. In case of obesity, the bacteria would respond to that input by secreting proteins that block lipid transporters in epithelial cells. In case of anorexia, the bacteria would secrete hormones that would make epithelial cells create more lipid transporters.
PestiBac	Bacteria substituting pesticides. These bacteria live on the leaves of the plants and secrete repelling substances. These bacteria have sensor in order to die if not in contact with the target plant or if they came in contact with animal's saliva. In addition they are modified to have a shorter lifetime, in order to limit population growth.
Luciolight	Luciolight is a Street Lamp made out of bacteria that imit biological circuit of fireflies.
Bacteriolavage	Bacteriolavage is a bacterial washing system to clean clothes with less water waste. Bacteria synthesize enzymes that degrade lipids and sugars in smaller particles that are more water-soluble, so that less water is consumed. Students used the concept of magnetic bacteria developed by the 2014 iGEM Berlin team to efficiently remove bacterias from clothes once the wash was finished.
Killpilus	Killpilus is a permanent hair removal cream. Bacterias contained in the preparation kill hair follicle stem cells. The team looked up on the internet for receptors specifically expressed in those stem cells to avoid off targets. For safety reasons, bacterias would commit suicide by apoptosis after one hour.
ConchitaColi	ConchitaColi cells digest dust and produce scented molecules. After the washing is finished, bacterias move towards a luminous bin where they die by apoptosis.
Healing+	"Healing+" is a system to repair wounds. Mammalian cells circulating in the blood detect intrusion of pathogens and respond by mobilisation of collagen and platelets in wounds.
easyFer	"easyFer" ("easyIron") is a system that uses an iron detecting biosensor to simplify the iron detection in the blood.

Menu 2

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam.

Menu 3

Eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.

Menu 4

Eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.