iGEM summer school 2013

Like last year, this years iGEM team organized a three day summer school. The overall idea was to give them an impression of our project and a short introduction into daily labwork. It is not a surprise that some of our topics, secretion and biofilm, passed by during this week. The day of arrival at the university started with a short introduction about iGEM and a tour though our building, the Linnaeusborg. The labwork started with plasmid isolation of three different strains: a wildtype amylase producing strain, a knock out of this amalyse strain and an amylase secretion mutant. During the week they had to discover which phenotypes belonged to which strains. To discover the phenotypes of the different strains, they did a halo test and a restriction analysis of the plasmid. The halo test showed the difference between the wildtype strain and both mutant strains, and the restriction analysis the difference between both mutant strains. By these experiments the secretion topic was well examined. During the week they grew a biofilm over a small area with the strains they got. In the lab we are working with a lot of different antibiotic resistance markers. To give the high school students an idea of how a strain reacts to different antibiotics we used an LB agar plate and filter paper with antibiotics. The students saw that when the strain was resistant for a certain antibiotic, the strain could grow and vica versa. The high school students not only did labwork, but they also got a lecture about Bacillus at the UMCG from prof. dr. van Dijl. The week ended with a discussion between the students and some PhD students, a post-doc and assistent profesors from different departments of our university, which gave them the opportunity to learn more about the field of science. And finally, after working in a molecular biology lab for a couple of days, they all received a certificate.

Part written by two students

Deze zomer organiseerde iGEM een summer school voor middelbare scholieren. Hieraan hebben wij, Kim en Amarins, meegedaan. Onze scheikundeleraar heeft ons aanbevolen mee te doen, omdat dit nuttig zou kunnen zijn voor ons profielwerkstuk. Deze drie daagse kennismaking met moleculaire biologie en de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen was inderdaad interessant. We hebben namelijk onderzoek gedaan naar stammen van Bacillus subtilis. De eerste dag hebben we een rondleiding gehad door de Linnaeusborg, waarbij we ook het lab van iGEM hebben gezien en informatie kregen over het onderzoeksteam. Hierna vertrokken we naar ons eigen lab voor de komende dagen. Daar hebben we een aantal proeven gedaan waarbij we onder andere plasmide hebben geïsoleerd en restrictie analyse hebben gedaan. Het was leuk om met nieuwe apparatuur te werken en de basisvaardigheden te oefenen. We zijn op de tweede dag met z’n allen naar het UMCG geweest en hier kregen we een praatje van prof. dr. Jan Maarten van Dijl, en we konden een kijkje nemen in zijn ML-2 laboratorium. Donderdag, de laatste dag van deze summer school, hebben we onder andere geluncht met onderzoekers en onze experimenten afgerond. Ook kregen we een certificaat en was er een borrel. Uiteindelijk zijn we blij dat we hebben meegedaan en was het gezellig en wel inspirerend voor ons profielwerkstuk. Verder hebben we een goede indruk gekregen van studeren in Groningen.

This summer we (Kim and Amarins) participated in a summer school that was organized by the 2013 iGEM team from Groningen. Our chemistry teacher encouraged us to do so, as it would perhaps be related to our final school project. The summer school at the Groningen university lasted three days and was very interesting. During this three day period we did research on Bacillus subtilis. On day one we had a guided tour through one of the university buildings called the Linneausborg, during which we visited the iGEM lab and learned about the iGEM team. After this tour we visited our own lab where we performed a number of tests with respect to plasmid isolations and restriction analysis. It was fun to work with the equipment and to practice our basic lab skills. On day two we visisted the UMCG hospital where we attended a lecture of prof. dr. Jan Maarten van Dijl and visited his ML-2 laboratory. On day three we had lunch with a number of researchers and managed to finish our experiments, after which we recieved our certificate en had a party. All in all we are glad with our decision to participate. We developed both new inspirations for our final project, as an impression on how it is to study in Groningen.

Some pictures of the summerschool. You can find more in our gallery.