Team:Stuttgart/Education

Visit at the Kerchensteinerschule

While competing in the iGEM competition, the teams are not only expected to work on their own scientific project but also to participate in education. In order to do so, each team is asked to communicate the values of iGEM and raise awareness of synthetic biology.

Our project aims to explore a new way of protection against UV radiation using a protein called Dsup. This protection is aimed to improve the efficiency of live-cell-imaging and if possible, provide protection for surfaces.

In order to communicate our project to the public, Stuttgart’s 2021 iGEM team decided to visit the Kerchensteinerschule in Feuerbach. The Kerchensteinerschule is a high school, which offers their students a normal education, ending in achieving their A-Level, while at the same time students participate in the lab. This enables them to gain experience on how to work and execute experiments correctly. At their graduation, they receive their A-Level, as well as a completed vocational education.

While being there, three team members gave the students a general overview of synthetic biology, meaning that they shared basic biological concepts and biological methods with the students. Furthermore, iGEM as an international competition was introduced, as well as the teams of the University of Stuttgart. The University of Stuttgart takes part in iGEM since 2017, so they gave the students a quick overview of the past projects. The Team of 2021 was shown in detail. Besides the presentation of the current team, this year’s project Tardisun was also introduced. We talked about our goals and our tasks in the lab, which need to be executed in order to explore the potential of Dsup further. Some methods, which we used in the lab were presented, such as plasmids, molecular cloning, Gibson assembly and PCR.

In the aftermath current results were shown. Our presentation video was viewed as well. One of our team members used to visit the Kerchensteinerschule, so he decided to explain several options after finishing the A-Level, such as starting to work or visiting a university.

Afterwards, the team members talked about what it is like to study technical biology at the University of Stuttgart. Firstly, we talked about visiting a university in general and pointed out the differences between studying at a University and going to school. Then we talked about the advantages of studying after visiting Kerchensteinerschule.
It was a very pleasant morning and we appreciate the invitation.
After finishing our project another visit is planned, where we can present our results.