Can we engineer bacteria to regenerate tissues?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Chris Contag, a biomedical engineer and microbiologist at Michigan State University. He is developing engineered endosymbionts that can repair tissues in the body.

• This resource also contains an interview with Chris and offers an insight into careers in biomedical engineering. If your students have questions for Chris, they can send them to him online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Chris will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Chris’ research and challenges them to persuade patients waiting for a heart transplant that engineered endosymbionts could be an alternative treatment option.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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