Team:Fatih Turkey/iGEM for 7 to 77

Beyond the lab works, we also strove for the innovation and presentation of synthetic biology to people. As a medical school, our hospital has its own quarterly magazine, “Yaşama Sanatı” (in English: The Art of Living). We decided that we could mention about iGEM and synthetic biology; thus we wrote an article that told the bacteria is not too much harmful living creature to humans as it is seen nowadays. In fact, we mentioned that bacteria would become very handy, helpful and inteligent “machines” in appropiate conditions. We listed the former experiments and parts that took place in iGEM competition and gave some examples about what to do next.
We also talked about iGEM competition and its international character. In the article attending of 130 teams throughout the world, seperation of competition to stages by continents and the teams from Turkey attending to iGEM were mentioned. The article took place in the magazine published on July- August- September 2011.  Considering its innovation and presentation for synthetic biology and iGEM competition, we found this work too important.

Fatih_Turkey team visited a kindergarten to tell children what genetic engineering is!

Our one of the most important goals as a team Fatih_Turkey is to introduce iGEM and Synthetic Biology to the students in Turkey. But we did not want to limit ourselves by choosing only same age groups and we decided to tell the children, too.

Synthetic biology has been told them by consultating with several pre-school institutions. Also we told them that bacteria do not cause only diseases ,in fact, they can also do good things for people. For example; they can heal the wound or they can produce light.

Then, we asked what their bacteria can do for them. We want them to show their ideas by painting. They are only 6-age individuals but they have a lot of
original idea that can be seen by looking their paintings.

For instance;
 * 'bacteria that extends the hair 8 cm in 3 minutes',
* 'bacteria massagers under the bed',
 * 'singer bacteria etc.
Consequently, we have told children that bacteria are not too harmful creatures
In fact, sometimes, they would be very useful for people. This experience was a wonderful remembrance for us.

Fatih Turkey ask medical school students that if you are an expert on synthetic biology, what you want from your bacteria to do for you?

Another activity that we did is in Fatih Medical School; firstly we had prepared a poster, then we hanged to our campus. We told them İGEM competition and some good bacteria in our poster. And we asked them; What do your bacteria do for you if you change their genome? And we wanted to write their opinions on the poster. And we decided surprise award for winner whom has given the best opinion.

Our colleagues have as children as originals idea. They were like that activity because it was done at exams time so they reduced stres on writing their imagine on the board with thinking their exams and their hero bacteria which would save them from the exams. Our colleagues wanted to impossible things from their bacteria.
Such as; 'Either exist as you are, or be as you look.(M.J.Rumi)',
 'my bacteria come to school for me, they get back to time(it was told after exams=)',
 'my bacteria enter my brain to increase my brain activity to 100%.'
 'My bacteria oversee for me (how poor assistant)' etc.

Of course all ideas were not case.
It s adhesive to cell membrane and regulate  to nutritional value.
It s produce to water because few years later the world will be completely desert.
It s repair to ozone layer.
It s grind to rubbish.

People whom have interests about IGEM and Synthetic biolgy, have also
increased thanks to the poster.

At 2011, we as Fatih Turkey (Medical School Wetlab Team) start to iGEM by performing presentation about Syntehtic Biology on world and at Turkey for Human Practice. We have performed Second International Medical Student Conference at Ankara. In the Conference, Synthetic Biology and iGEM competition related presentation was performed to inform medical school students coming from different medical schools at Turkey and also from out of Turkey ie. Japan.

Burak Yilmaz, CEO of Sentegen, as our sponsor has started his talk from discovery of DNA to Synthetic Biology, from this concept to International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) and from iGEM  to iGEM teams at Turkey.

Medical Students coming to our conference have been informed about Synthetic Biology Concept which consists of the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems, and the re-design of existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes such as genetically engineered medical projects like Fast Wound Healing Project performed by METU-Gene Team at iGEM 2009. 

Especially, the students were excited when we mentioned the synthetic biology projects like engineered bacteria having the ability to find and kill tumor cells. In addition, we gave also examples from the paper 'The impact of synthetic biology on drug  discovery' conducted by Martin Fussenegger and Wilfried Weber. From the paper, synthetic biology phenonmenon was mentioned in the conference in order to be used in medical schools to enable disease mechanisms and target identification to be alucidated and also provide avenues to discover small chemotherapeutic molecules or design novel biopharmaceuticals.

Next, we began to talk about the widest synthetic biology competition -iGEM-. We said to our friends from different medical schools that gene parts named as Biobricks distributed to all iGEM teams in plates are used to perform functional and useful projects in an organism by the teams, especially in E.coli, during an enjoyable summer lab working. Different biobricks, their certain functions and how they are assembled were told in the talk.