On October 1, 2017, the NYUAD iGEM team invited high school students and teachers from Brighton College in Abu Dhabi, UAE, to experience an iGEM research environment. This one-day workshop provided the students with the opportunity to channel their interest in both biology and engineering. This is the first high school workshop that is tailored to exposing talented high school students to iGEM in the UAE.
The workshop was kicked off by a presentation on iGEM and emphasized how the students can get involved by potentially joining future NYUAD teams or by creating their own team. Through this presentation, the students also learned the important connection between biology and engineering in the context of iGEM and the field of synthetic biology. This presentation was followed by the first workshop of the day: GLO, Bacteria, GLO, which taught the students how to transform pGLO DNA into the E. coli cloning vector using the heat shock method. The NYUAD team walked them through basic laboratory techniques including, lab safety, basic pipetting techniques and bacterial transformation, which is integral to an iGEM team’s success. The students then experienced the engineering environment through the second workshop Arduino + LED, which taught the students how to integrate many elements to create a device that included interactive design, programming, and circuitry. The students learned the basics of programming and circuit design by creating their own simple circuit using LEDs and Arduino, an open source electronic platform. After completing the workshop, the students also received a copy of the NYUAD team’s magazine Synthetic Biology 101 as a source for further information about recent advances in synthetic biology.
The NYUAD team is proud to have pioneered the first iGEM-specific workshop for high school students in the UAE. The workshop achieved the original aim of propagating the impact of iGEM in the region and encouraging interest in scientific research among high school students. In the future, the NYUAD team envisions similar workshops that can reach a larger audience in the UAE.
One Saturday evening, inspired by a TED talk that he recently watched on iGEM, a student from NYU New York emailed us: How can I start my own iGEM team? For a freshman minoring in genetics, iGEM must have seemed like Disneyland for him; a Jamboree of 4000 outstanding minds, representing 300 teams from five different continents, all gathered at the same place to share what they’ve accomplished in the past year. So, how can we answer his question?
Firstly, any school willing to take part in a contest of such caliber should be fully invested in it, monetarily. Bringing something new to the table, whether it’s cheap or not, requires serious prototyping, testing, and resources, which translates to a seemingly hefty bill. iGEM should be a student-led initiative, but it is also crucial to have instructors, who are experts in this field, to be a part of this project. What makes iGEM unique is that although the heart of the project is synthetic biology, engineering a device that runs parallel to the biology is also a must. Wouldn’t a 600hp engine be sweetly complimented by a car with a spyder exterior? Computer scientists shouldn’t also be left out – since a significant portion of the evaluation sheet includes elements from the Wiki page, it is wise to add one or two CS enthusiasts beforehand to the team.
What’s next? Apply on behalf of your school for the contest, come up with a cool project idea involving Biobricks, keep dedications high, and take it a step further to Boston to show the world what you’ve accomplished!
Our portable, Shiga Toxin device enables users to detect the impurities in their food on-the-go, without conducting tedious tests in a laboratory. Statistics say that roughly one in ten food poisonings happen due to this toxin, so wouldn’t it be great if we could have a huge database filled with results taken from different food sample across different continents? This would also be a breakthrough for scientists and researchers, who can use these statistics to further identify regions that are in serious threat due to Shiga toxin. General food vendors can use this to avoid impure food, and help others do it too, by reporting it via an application.
This app allows users to take their findings a step further, and document it! Each experiment conduced has its own unique QR code attached to the device, which can be read by the app and be uploaded to a database in the computer.
We have all the information securely stored. A potential development on a large scale to this would be to add the results on a capable online server, which is accessible to all. The basic concept for that would still be the same, except the fact that data is now stored online rather than offline.
