Team:AFCM-Egypt/Education
Education
SynFair 2021: a step towards the future
Our team this year took advantage of the fact that AFCM is one of the first colleges in the continent of Africa to include bioinformatics in its curriculum, and that we have a fair knowledge and experience with Synbio and bearing in mind that science must always be passed on. We put a tremendous amount of effort and time into our annual educational program; this year we boosted the number of school students attending by two folds, hosting around 220 students. Thanks to the efforts of the Egyptian Ministry of Education, we were able to diversify the groups by inviting students from different governorates and cities including Cairo, Giza, Tanta and Bani-Suef.
Our synfair program started on the 21st of September and lasted for 6 consecutive days during which school students were flowing into our campus with lots of vibrancy and eagerness to learn.
The event started with High school students, they were first introduced to our 2021 team, where each member was assigned to supervise a group of students. Afterwards, the lectures began with an introduction on the basics, tools and applications of molecular biology, then they were directed to the lab where safety and precautions, along with the standard protocol of DNA extraction were explained thoroughly. Next, they were given the chance to experience practical work with their own hands. Each student had their own materials and samples prepared prior to their arrival, in order to perform DNA extraction from a rat's plasma cells following the standard kit’s protocol.
On the next day, the students were given a lecture on basics of scientific research and the research methodology. Followed by an introduction to Bioinformatics and SynBio in the form of competitions and games among the students which made it an interactive learning session with lots of fun. After the lunch break, it was time for a lecture on Mathematical modelling and its applications in scientific research, where they were taught about how to transfer real world problems into mathematical equations. Also, they were introduced to Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) which are used to interpret populations and parameters changing over time and plot the equations on to graphs to easily compare between populations. This was followed by an introduction to Python. Then we had a session where we told them about the project that they are supposed to design and work on. They were requested, in light of the knowledge given to them during the past two days, to search for a problem that faces the Egyptian community, and search for an innovative scientific solution for it using the tools of synthetic biology, genetic engineering, bioinformatics and mathematical modelling. This problem can be in any field they prefer, ranging from the medical, agricultural fields to industrial and marine biotechnology. The students were put into groups of six and each group was assigned to one of our AFCM IGEM team members to supervise and monitor the project development. The projects are to be presented and evaluated on the 10th of November in the form of posters at AFCM campus. At the end of the day, they were given a closing lecture on soft skills that tackled topics like how to work as a team and how to deal with people from different backgrounds.
On the 3rd and 4th days, we welcomed the preparatory school students in our Campus. Our activities started with a lecture on basics of cell biology and physiology where the students were introduced to types of cells and their components. After explaining lab safety and precautions, they had a practical application on the theoretical lecture. Each student performed the Rapi-Diff stain protocol on cells swabbed from their own cheeks and they observed the stained cells under the microscope. Later on, an enjoyable activity was held where the students formed groups of seven and each group was asked to design a cell along with its components using coloured contact paper and scissors under the supervision of the AFCM IGEM team members. Best group project was rewarded at the end of the session as they proved excellence and understanding of the addressed content. Eventually, they carried out the ABO blood typing experiment to identify their blood group type; this practical work was based on the lecture they took on basics of genetics and inheritance. This was followed by a tutorial on how to write a lab report.
Finally, on the last two days of the Synfair, elementary stage students were given simplified lectures on cell biology and physiology and introductory genetics. They carried out a basic experiment at the microbiology lab, this came of course after a session on lab safety and precautions. The experiment was basically to swab samples from random surfaces, for instance, the bench, the floor, or even their shoes, etc, and inoculate them on agar petri dishes. In addition, they had the chance to observe previously prepared bacterial cultures and microscopic slides of different stained non-pathogenic microorganisms under the microscope. After the lab work, each student drew their own bacterium using white paper and coloured pencils; this activity was to assess their level of comprehension. Another fun project was the “Build your own DNA” activity, using marshmallows and gummy bears, each team was asked to build a 3D structure of the DNA, keeping in mind what they learnt previously during the theoretical lecture about the DNA backbone and nitrogenous bases.
The SynFair was a huge success from day one based on the feedback received from supervisors, parents ,and students as a group of them bestowed us with a 5 minute dazzling video thanking our team for what we taught them and presenting what they learned in those 2 days. We had the pleasure to welcome Dr. Randa Shaheen, Head of the Public Education Sector representing the Egyptian Ministry of Education, she praised the high level of organisation of the event and suggested inviting more schools and students, in addition to extending the Synfair period in 2022.
Building On to Wikipedia
Synthetic biology is one of the most discussed subjects of the twenty-first century, and in 2020 it turned 20 years old. It has blossomed, bringing a slew of new technologies and breakthroughs with outstanding scientific publications, a lot of forward-thinking, and tremendous enthusiasm.
Meanwhile in Egypt and the Arab world, the educational curriculum does not cover synthetic biology, and the books and other teaching materials provide very little information on this topic. And despite the aforementioned initiatives of Synthetic Biology development by the iGEMers, still the majority of our community from non-biological science disciplines have minimal knowledge of this topic; but they are nevertheless very eager to learn.
On the other hand, if they ever decided to surf the internet for a piece of information on the number one free online multilingual encyclopedia and the number one search result for the most search engines “Wikipedia”, they will find no Arabic data at all about Synthetic biology.
So we decided as a part of our responsibility as iGEMers to educate the general public in Egypt and the MENA region about Synthetic Biology, through providing a summary of around 1600 words in pure Arabic language that is straightforward to grasp; in an attempt to pave the road for a deeper knowledge of Synthetic Biology for many years to come. Click here to check the link for our summary.
Introducing iGEM to the brilliant students of Ain Shams University.
Early in October, our team paid a visit to our fellow students from Ain Shams University (ASU). The aim of the visit was to introduce the new generation of ASUians to iGEM as an attempt to recruit more teams in the region or at least to teach them more about fields of genetic engineering and synthetic biology.
Upon our arrival to the campus and after the warm welcoming we received, we started the day by displaying taped videos from our previous jamborees, both live and online ones to walk the ASU students through the story of the iGEM team of AFCM-Egypt. We talked about the reason why and how we joined iGEM for the first time, what societal problems we addressed and the basis on which we choose to solve those problems.
We told them that in the past years, two teams from the American University in Cairo and Cairo University have participated in iGEM, they achieved silver and bronze medals respectively. We also told them about the joint team we formed with ASU students back in 2017. Furthermore, one of our team members gave a tutorial on the registration process ,the main deliverables, and the medal criteria. In addition, we convey our experience regarding the obstacles that we faced over the course of the years and how we dealt with them. We finished our presentation by giving our team members’ contacts and the AFCM iGEM email as an open channel to answer any inquiries they might have in the future.
The second part of the day was for educational purposes owing to the fact that the attendees were students from different faculties and for us it was important to teach them what they needed to know about breast cancer in Egypt. Lectures were given delineating current actualities about breast cancer stressing on the following learning objectives:
- Epidemiology
- Incidence rates
- Definition, types, and subtypes
- Symptoms
- Importance of early detection
- A brief overview about different treatment approaches available currently.
- A guide for the different Egyptian facilities providing diagnostic and therapeutic services.
- References for further self study.
Besides the students, our efforts received great acceptance from the administration and university professors who attended.
