Lesson OverviewSummary This activity connects the engineered oil-eating abilities of microbes to large-scale bioremediation efforts. Students will observe microbes break down oil in water over the course of a few days. They will also design and observe experimental...
Bacterial Biosensor Design
Lesson OverviewSummary In this activity, students are asked to design a bacterial biosensor device on paper. Students are offered a scenario: they have a choice of two bacterial biosensors (lead and xylene detecting). They must create a device to house the engineered...
Virtual Physarum Chemotaxis
Lesson OverviewSummary This activity is designed as a virtual experiment into physarum preferences by observing its chemotaxis. The lesson starts with a simple demo, where student predict physarum chemotaxis toward either water or sugar. Then groups of students read...
Intro to Bacterial Biosensors
Lesson OverviewSummary This lesson offers students an introduction into biosensors, which is a sensor that uses a living organism or biological components to detect the presence of chemicals. In this activity we focus on bacterial biosensors made by manipulating the...
Bioethics (Portobello Colegio and the UCSF Biosensor)
Lesson OverviewSummary This activity introduces students to ethics and bioethics. Bioethics concerns some of the more difficult dilemmas and decisions facing scientists as science advances, particilarly in the field of Cellular Engineering which strives, in part, to...
Physarum Chemotaxis 2
Lesson OverviewSummary This activity builds on the first physarum chemotaxis experiment. This iteration of experiments is a process that scientists and cellular engineers engage in regularly. Using computational thinking, students look for patterns in data from the...
Physarum Chemotaxis 1
Lesson OverviewSummary This activity is designed as an open-ended exploration into physarum preferences by observing its chemotaxis. Students first observe that physarum will move towards oats, and then design experiments to determine its preference by observing its...
Model Organisms
Lesson OverviewSummary In this activity, students select a model organism and brainstorm possible strengths and limitations of using this model in scientific experiments.For editable worksheets and powerpoints please login here.Models have strengths and weaknesses....
Hydra Self-Assembly
Lesson OverviewSummary This activity connects single-celled organisms and their programming with more complicated multicellular organisms, like hydra or human beings. Students will break down living hydra into a ball of single cells, completely dismantling its...
Final Challenges
Lesson OverviewSummary This is a great conclusion to a unit about cell biology, genetic engineering, or cellular engineering. Students are asked to program a robot to solve a challenge mat modeled after a real world problem that might be solved by cellular...