Team:IISER Bhopal/Communication
Science Communication
INTRODUCTION
Science communication is a fundamental part for the advancement of science. It allows the sharing of research results, conclusions, and the rationale behind the research among various stakeholders such as other scientists and members of society. Therefore, despite the pandemic, we attempted to share information about synthetic biology and our project to a wide range of audiences, from primary school students to the general public.
The materials created by the team for science communication were based on research, suggestions, and support from the previous IISER Bhopal iGEM team members, IISER Bhopal Quiz Club, and Science Council, IISER Bhopal. We aimed to gather constructive feedback and spark open discussions about synthetic biology and Cancer among target audiences through various modes of communication, including written texts, videos, comics, DIY experiments, and presentations. This led to the creation of the different components of science communication such as a Synbio Workbook, Genos 2.0 (an e-magazine), webinars including presentations and DIY experiments for school students, interactive reels for cancer awareness, Mini iGEM Competition to give a mock iGEM experience and interviews/articles for various magazines. From these, the team hopes that we have and will continue to increase awareness and inspire our community to contribute to cancer prevention. Therefore, we also have some potential future collaborations that we have planned with other partners.
Synbio Workbook
Synthetic Biology is a rapidly expanding and very popular field of science which draws a lot of students & enthusiasts toward it. There should be proper educational material for all such enthusiasts to begin learning and understanding the Synthetic biology based concepts. With this in mind, we started preparing a workbook, which was specifically constructed to be linked to the Indian year 11 and 12 CBSE Senior School Certificate (SSC) biology syllabus. This is important to establish the links between the materials students are learning in class and the applications of synthetic biology to real world problems. It is also hoped that by providing an example of how biological science is applied in the real world through synthetic biology, this workbook will inspire high school students & 1st year college students to pursue synthetic biology and be able to apply it in real world problems.
Inclusivity
Our focus was that language should not be a barrier for Synbio enthusiasts around the world to get the knowledge of synthetic biology. Therefore, we collaborated with various iGEM teams (iGEM Thrace & HKBU) from around the globe and local attributors to get it translated into majorly spoken global languages. The workbook is already translated into 5 major languages ( English, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Greek) and we have several ongoing translation works, which are Traditional Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and French, which are expected to be finished soon. We are also determined and will continue to get it translated into all possible languages and will continue this initiative even after iGEM.Workbook Link
School Webinars
We conducted various webinars for School students covering various states of India with the goal of making them aware about Synthetic Biology and iGEM competition. Our focus was not only on making them aware of these things but to also drive their interest towards Synthetic biology. Therefore we also included various D-I-Y experiments in the webinars which students were able to perform along with us giving them hands-on experience of Synbio. The slides we presented in these webinars were designed by our chief designer Anurag and are readily available for use by other teams in future if they wish to.
Singularity -Lab Tours
Singularity, which is IISER Bhopal’s annual Science festival, and also the largest science fest of Central India was held between 2nd-10th October, 2021. The science fest also has a component of science outreach where the Singularity team reached out to about 25+ Schools from and around Bhopal, to which our iGEM team gave a lab tour of our workplace which fascinated them towards pursuing biology and Synthetic biology in particular.
Genos 2.0
The second edition of our in-house e-Magazine ‘GENOS 2.0’ - Making a Difference, One Transformation at a Time was filled with simple posts, stories and articles that were widely circulated within our student WhatsApp groups to boost interest in Synthetic Biology. The initiative for Genos was started by our 2020 iGEM team and we decided to continue this trend as it was a widely popular e-magazine in our school outreach circles, as it contains interesting application based info about synthetic biology.
Mini - iGEM Competition
We organized a mini-iGEM competition to give students of our college as well as high schoolers a feel about how actual iGEM competition works. This competition was organized in two different categories separated over a distinct timeline.
Mini iGEM I
: The process was started in December 2020 itself, wherein proposals were invited from individuals and teams of upto 6 people ( from BS-MS & PhDs). The applicants were given 2 months of time to ideate and had to come up with a detailed proposal consisting of Biobricks being created, technical design and proposed stakeholder identification. We received 7 superb proposals which went through screening and presentation for 2 rounds. The judging chair was composed of 5 faculty members from the Department of Biotechnology, IISER Bhopal. The best project (Breast cancer treatment) selected was later modified to be the core idea of our project.
Mini iGEM II
: To give the mock experience of iGEM to newly inducted 1st year students and high-schoolers, during Singularity (our annual science fest), we organized a mini-iGEM competition wherein problem statements were sent to the community which had to be solved in iGEM-esque way using concepts of Synthetic biology. The problem statements given were:-
Question 1
The world is infected by a deadly disease spread by Zingu Virus (hypothetical). Use synthetic biology as your primary tool to eradicate/prevent infection of this disease into humans. Take into consideration Dual-use concern, safety and side-effects of your solution.
Question 2
Think about any broad spectrum problem which has a contemporary relevance. This could be almost any major entity - for example, global warming, disease diagnosis / treatment, etc . Design a project that uses Synthetic Biology tools to help tackle some aspect (or even the entirety) of such a problem.
We received very exciting entries from freshmen students, which included some components of SynBio. Cash prizes were awarded to Winners. Mr. Raj Mishra ( UG 2020) was awarded first prize for the same.
Cancer Comics
To make people aware about the problem of cancer and associated treatments in a more entertaining way, we have prepared a set of 3 short comic strips for 3 different cancers with 3 different treatment approaches including our own solution, all compiled into the comic book “Can-verse”.
Comic StripSynBio related interviews/blogs
- NGSF interview :- Next Gen Science Foundation took our interview about various stages iGEMers have to go through in their iGEM cycle and how team like ours handle it. We also shared our experience regarding iGEM and our thoughts regarding SynBio expansion in their interview. Click here for Interview
- Manthan Blog :- As a part of BLAST: A Novel Approach for Effective Cancer Cure – Manthan
- iGEM Guelph :- We also helped the iGEM team of Guelph for their content preparation for a magazine they were making for Canadian High School students. They took our interview asking us about our project details including all aspects ranging from dry lab, wet lab and our efforts for Synbio communication.
- Chrysalis :- Synthetic Biology: Re-designing Life
Instagram awareness
We kept our Instagram page and other social media pages engaging by posting regular posts, reels and challenges on Synthetic Biology, iGEM and Cancer awareness awareness which is a major part of our project. Our cancer awareness reel series on instagram gained wide audience view ( of 5K+) and was became very popular within few days.
Medium
We had a team of fourteen active bloggers who published great quality content with up to three articles on Synthetic Biology every week which were shared widely on Medium, Whatsapp and promoted actively on Instagram. These articles were as dynamic as data storage to wildlife conservation to diabetes or just biofuels. Wherever synthetic biology had a real-world application we spoke about it to keep our audience hooked.
SynBio Quiz :-
Synbio Quizzes were fun group activities with exciting incentives like prize money and appreciation posts on Instagram. Our team conducted a quiz during AIIM 2021 which received the highest participation from all iGEM teams and other iGEM enthusiasts.
