Building and training human tendons in the lab

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology and Engineering.

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 Professor Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy, a bioengineer based at the University of Oxford in the UK, who is using humanoid robotic arms and soft bioreactor chambers to ‘train’ tendons to deal with the stresses they will encounter in the human body.
• This resource also contains an interview with Pierre and his colleague, Nicole. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. Pierre and Nicole will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Pierre’s research, and tasks them to think about what bioengineering will look like in 20 years.

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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