Science Fair Project

[Advait Patil]

Hi, I am a high-schooler looking for synthetic biology science fair projects that are new and have not been accomplished/conducted.

I have come up with several ideas, but they are either already done or not feasible.

[Dakota Hamill]

Welcome to science!

What ideas did you come up with?

Just because something has been done once doesn't mean it can't be improved upon, indeed much science is done sort of in a step-wise fashion building off the achievements/failures of a previous experiment.  

What equipment do you have access to?

On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 11:41 PM, Advait Patil <epica...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, I am a high-schooler looking for synthetic biology science fair projects that are new and have not been accomplished/conducted.

I have come up with several ideas, but they are either already done or not feasible.

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[Advait Patil]

I have access to a community lab called biocurious in sunnyvale.

Here are some projects ideas I was thinking of, but they trailed off and aren't leading anywhere.

[Advait Patil]

https://pad.riseup.net/p/experimentplanning

[Meow-Ludo]

I would recommend doing something with either bacteria or insects.

It is really good to find a problem and then think about ways of using bacteria to solve that problem. Often the more interesting problems come from third-world countries, and biohacking is awesome becuase oftne your approach will below cost so is transferrable to them.

Try searching what problems exist and make a list. You might want to looks for problems that are qualitative or quantatitve; ie detcting the presennce of something, or measuring how much of something is around. These are really good becuase if the approach is new, even if it doesn't work super well, you can still demonstrate that it works. It can also opne up new ways of thinking about other problems.

I hope that helps!

[Koeng]

Its kinda hard to find something to do that NO ONE else has ever done before, but its very easy to make huge improvements to their systems. And I agree, using bacteria to solve a problem is a very very good idea, its something that people can relate to, which is HUGELY important in a science fair. If making something for a third world country, I'd probably recommend trying out a system in Bacillus. It can sporulate easily making distribution very cheap. Perhaps just take a detection system used in E coli and transfer it to Bacillus, and give the pitch that now in Bacillus it can actually be used in these countries. (But ya, I am a little biased towards Bacillus)

On experiment 2, you should check on this thread- https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/diybio/antibiotics/diybio/TeHXjfVO0hM/GrNM_tfPrBIJ 

It's easier said then done because of these huge pathways

On experiment 3, I think I heard an iGem project that was thinking about that. The biggest problem is getting that through clinical trials. It might cause a lot of allergic reactions, which could halt it.

Keep in mind to keep experiments almost never go as planned, as I've found out at an academic lab. Try to reduce steps in any experiment, make it simple, and check absolutely everything possible with sequencing and other analytical techniques. It once took me nearly a month to clone a set of only 8 plasmids. Don't get discouraged though: Synthetic biology and science fairs have been the most rewarding experience I've ever had. Every single experiment is worth it.

-Koeng