Team:Baltimore BioCrew/Education

2021 Baltimore Biocrew

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Education

Overview

A class for high school students

Our human practices team collaborated to educate our audience of adolescents about the importance of mental health and the scientific basis of mental health. We divided our education program into three different parts: Providing mental health awareness and resources, educating about the gut-brain axis, and the feasibility of psychobiotics as a solution.

  • For mental health awareness and resources, we wanted to educate the public about the issue of mental health stigma and the serious effects of mental health disorders as well as discussing topics such as addiction.
  • For the gut-brain axis, we discussed the anatomy of the brain and the gut, as well as how our specific genes function in those specific body systems.
  • By introducing the unfamiliar topic of psychobiotics, we broke down how psychobiotics are developed through the discussion of probiotic bacteria, protein production, and serotonin syndrome, in which too much serotonin could be produced from our JoyBiotic system.

We have worked with our high school principal and health teacher to design a program that could be taught in our schools. To engage students, we included interactive activities to spread positivity about mental health through positive affirmation assignments. Since our target audience is adolescents, we wanted to make mental health a comfortable topic to talk about and relate to everyday life. These affirmation activities were designed as a method of bringing positive change to a sensitive topic for many.

Slides from the class that we designed




Baltimore BioCrew Instagram Account

Through the use of our social media posts, the Human Practices team has shown that our project is good for the world by informing the public about the mental health crisis, probiotics, gut-brain health, and the role that synthetic biology plays on working towards regulating mental illness, such as depression and anxiety.
We have spent months putting information relating to our project into an easily understandable format to keep our audience interested in significant information- information that not only relates to our project, but to the broader topic of the brain-gut axis as well. We have helped an increasing number of people become informed over the course of our project so that they can formulate their own informed opinions on the issue. It is clear that this has been done successfully based on the rising number of people who view our posts as well as the results from our polls and quizzes. Based on the results from the beginning of the social media campaign and the end, we can observe that our audience now have a better understanding on the topics through exposure to our posts.
Because we have provided the public with unbiased information, which they have retained based on the results of our social media feedback, a larger audience will understand how the implementation of our bioengineered probiotic would affect society’s mental wellbeing. Having more informed people who can advocate for such a change in their community or on a national level could either help or hinder the implementation of our altered gut bacteria.


Instagram Story Posts

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Comic Book Addressing Mental Health Issues

Aside from making the joy-biotic, our design team is working on a comic book about depression during COVID-19. This project was in development since April, before the idea of planning for the Joy-biotic. As of now, the project will still be in development since the project is too massive to rush with the wiki time constraints. One of the biggest challenges for making the comic book is drawing realistic people/ideals/places. Another challenge was to bring comedy and emotion to the comic, instead of solely using it for advertising the Joy-biotic or being there just for giving information. A lot had to go through with this project, and while this was trying to be more than just a iGEM comic book, sacrifices had to be made. Many ideas for the projects and the chapters were in May, and we ended up with 6 chapters, which would make this comic almost the same length as a graphic novel. With this out of the way and with our ambitious ideas, the comic book won’t be released during the wiki due to it being bigger than we expected. Instead, we chose to take our time during the project and work on it outside of the iGEM 2021 competition. The working title of the comic is called “ Everythings going to be OK” because many times during the novel, events seems to get worse, especially because the comic tries to imitate the events of 2020 and adds satire.
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Chapter 1
The main protagonist Marcus has to leave his high school due to the ongoing pandemic. He is stuck at home, depressed in bed since he can’t do his normal activities like socializing with his friends. He also mentions he misses his dad, who passed away from a heart attack in 2018, yet school and socializing was the only way for him to cope. Inside his brain called the Head quarters, President Axon, the main antagonist who is based on the US president from 2020, thinks all the germs from the gut are bad, he and his parliament team tries to put a diaper mandate for germs to stop producing what he thinks are harmful for the economy. In Gut town, the protagonist Bifi ( based on bifidobacterium) is also depressed from losing his job at a poop factory during the ongoing pandemic in the gut . He talks to his friend Lacto (based on lactobacillus) to see any plans when the mandate is over. Back outside Marcus's body, his friend Daniel who works in the iGem lab gives him a new drinking product, the Joy-biotic to help Marcus feels better, which works and Marcus finally feels active again. They both end up going for a walk. The chapter ends back inside Marcus where things get better and president Axon allows the micro bacteria in Gut Town to start going outside again. Lacto and Bifi goes for a walk.

Chapter 2
This chapter is darker, as Marcus and Daniel had to witness their friend Michael dying from COVID. The effects of the Joy Biotic stopped working with Marcus, as he doesn't want to see his friend die, yet he has to say goodbye, making him more depressed than ever. It was indicated in the last chapter that Michael contracted COVID from news from Daniel but was going to survive. But this wasn't the case here. Meanwhile, President Axon realizes Marcus is getting worse and makes plans to exterminate the micro bacteria in Gut Town. This chapter ends with Marcus having to be texted by Daniel who was in the hospital the whole time that Michael didn't made it through, and Marcus had to witness his body bag. Lacto and Bifi tries to walk to Anal Abyss, a parody of Niagra Falls, bordering Gut Town and the outside world. Many kamikaze planes from the headquarters come and cause a storm and tsunami in the abyss. A big finger-like monster comes out the abyss and takes Lacto. Bifi is in shock witnessing Lacto's death and everything ends with Gut Town being destroyed and microbiomes getting destroyed.

Chapter 3
Marcus develops OCD contamination after Michael's death. His mom is usually angry since he won't be coming out of the bathroom showering for hours, knowing it cost money for the family and she lost her job during COVID. OCD changed Marcus Marcus perspective on cleanliness, he sees everything as feces and is disgusted by everything surrounding him. He doesn't want to eat because he thinks food is just undigested poop, and this made him not take the Joy-biotic. Marcus tries to talk to Daniel, but Daniel thinks he needs some help thinking like this. Marcus seems to lose the friendship with Daniel and has a falling out with his mom, as if he was at war with them yet they have to work together. This is also showcased inside Marcus's body, as the Headquarters are at war with Gut town.The neurons want to exterminate the micro bones and Gut Town wants to be an independent country. Because the mayor of Gut Town was killed during the attacks in the last chapters, it's up for Bifi to be the leader of Gut Town during the war. He meets E Coli who came from the Joy Biotic and they try to work together.

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 discusses poverty and how a lack of money forces people to leave on bad decisions. This also covers commentary about police brutality going on with people of color during 2020. Marcus's mom Vanessa realizes she's being evicted from their home since Marcus was showering too much giving a high water bill. Other family members don't have space to keep them anywhere, so they have to be homeless. Vanessa tells Marcus to keep their morals no matter how bad their conditions are. Marcus meets a group of friends that does questionable things to get money that ends him with trouble with the law. His uncle usually had to bail him out, but things got worse when police were assaulting Vanessa for getting food. Even though Marcus has been going through danger, he's trying to save his mom from that danger. Meanwhile inside Marcus, Bifi is captured as a war hero and is trying to escape from prison. The chapter ends with Bifi escaping prison and trying to stop the violence in the war, and Marcus and Vanessa meeting Melissa, Michael's mother, and finally gets to live with her since she had to lose her son and husband.

Chapter 5
This chapter covers the topic of our scrapped project from this year, red meat addiction. Marcus finally has food again, although Melissa lives in a food desert, they live with mostly red meat. From the last chapter, Marcus started to regain his love for food… almost too much where for months he constantly eats red meat and gets a heart attack just like his father. Most of the chapter involves him in a vegetative state at the hospital going through trials of escaping the imagination of the purgatory and heaven. Meanwhile, Bifi tries making a speech of how the war should stop because not all germs are bad, everyone agrees except for President Axon, who seriously injured Bifi and he's taken to the Heart Hospital.

Chapter 6
This is really where things end. Marcus comes back to living life, having to finally say goodbye to his father and Michael in heaven and leaving from a teleportation device from the president of heaven ( and no the president of heaven isn't a religious figure, it's surprisingly someone else). The same thing can't be said for Bifi knowing he had to be sacrificed to save Gut Town. Marcus is recovering, by receiving therapy, reconciling with Daniel, using the Joy-biotic again, and Vanessa gets married to Melissa. Gut Town remembers Bifi as a hero and E. Coli, a revived Lacto who came back to life from the Joy-biotics and their kids, remembers the life of Bifi, while President Axon gets executed for his war crimes and the neurons hire Sleepy neuron as the new president for Marcus's body. Headquarters and Gut Town are at peace again.
Many topics with mental health were addressed here and we tried to add social commentary to 2021 by putting it inside Marcus and making that place a cartoon-like world. story posts 3


A project by the Baltimore BioCrew 2021 team.

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