Introduction
Synthetic biology can be a foreign subject for many members of our society. Nevertheless, it is important knowledge with large potential that makes it important for the public to be aware of in order to give input and for the science and regulations to reach. Human practice and communication both play a large role in the outreach and integration of feedback into our project. More can be seen under Communications and Human Practices. Another part of talking about forein topics is to be inclusive. In our project we have made efforts to make our project, outreach and inputs inclusive in different ways, these are presented below:
Promotion Video
Our team consists of members from nine different nationalities, three different universities, eight different programs with both graduate, master and bachelor students. For our promotion video we used our diverse background, contacts and families to make subtitles in eleven different languages. Everyone should be able to talk with their family and relatives about their iGEM project and everyone interested should be able to understand our work. We felt like that was a good mission in order to spread the word.
Educational Package
Which group is underrepresented when it comes to scientific knowledge? Children! Generally speaking, science is explained in an advanced way, requiring previous knowledge to build on. Why not simplify it to make science understandable for children? They are curious and want to learn, which is why we launched our educational package.
This package contains activities regarding synthetic biology: it was implemented in Swedish schools. We decided to target younger pupils, ages 6 to 9, and 10 to 13, to conform to the Swedish curriculum in biology, as these students usually do not get introduced to synthetic biology.
For teachers, we provided a schedule and instructions of the package: the day starts off with a short video explaining what synthetic biology is. The introductory video was followed by biology charades. Next the pupils learnt about the basics of DNA and how synthetic biology often works - by changing the DNA of bacteria.
To deepen their understanding of the topic, an exercise called "Create your own Super Bacteria" was next. In this exercise the pupils were given four legos in different colours, each lego representing a biobrick. The pupils were invited to arrange their biobricks in a sequence of their choice and also to choose from which direction their construct was going to be read. Each construct corresponded to a superpower of their bacteria, according to our key. The pupils were invited to draw their bacteria; you can see some of their drawings below. We ended the day with a bacteria related running game and a kahoot summarizing the topics.
All in all, the educational package was used in a variety of different schools, helping to inspire a whole new generation of scientists! We also made it available online so it can continue being a starting point for introducing synthetic biology and other disciplines of biotechnology at earlier ages in Swedish schools and homes. For more detailed information on the feedback we got from teachers and students, visit our Education page.
Both the educational package and our promotion video are accessible on our Youtube channel.
Stigma
Skin problems have existed at all times, in all ages and in different forms. Since our project focuses on skin health, normalizing skin problems and starting a discussion about the societal pressure to have perfect skin has been one of our main goals. According to our skin microbiota survey 79% of all participants have had skin problems at some point in their life. 30% have felt insecure about it, whereas 58% of our respondents felt mildly affected by the state of their skin. We believe that the insecurity people feel about skin conditions prevents people from seeking professional help: we want to do our part in breaking that stigma! Therefore, we asked the public to send in pictures of their skin, which according to them was flawed. These pictures were passed on to seven local artists to use as an inspirational source to create art. The seven beautiful paintings that were created were posted on our Instagram account for the public to enjoy and to realize the normality of skin problems.
With the SKINart project we aimed to share art pieces that make you relate and feel about the subject. Skin diseases can be harmful to our physical and mental health. One reason for this we imagine to be the lack of skin problems in media forms like films, papers or on social media. We want to bring up the conversation and show that our skin is beautiful, we want to talk about the subject, we do not want anyone to feel left out or insecure due to their skin.
Figure 1: We managed to get seven works of art from very talented local artists. All the art was posted on our Instagram and was displayed during one of our events. We believe this has inspired and helped empower people concerning their skin!
Postcard
To continue our aim to break the stigma of having skin problems we used the postcard collaboration to let our bare (no make-up) faces represent our project. This was done, not only to explain our project, but also to show what unedited skin looks like, something that is not very common in social and other forms of media.
Figure 2: The front of our postcard
Figure 3: The back of our postcard
Figure 4: Our postcard can be seen in the upper right corner of the image, with all the different clear skin tones.
Connection
Greetings from around the world video in the iGEM 2021 collaborative video project shows the broadness of iGEM. IGEM is a wide community, but through the internet and social media we can all get together, greet and connect. The aim of this collaboration was to show the broadness of the iGEM community and for us to greet each other in our native languages.
We sent in a greeting saying "Hello, my name is Elsa and I am a part of iGEM Stockholm" to the video. Over 35 other teams sent in a greeting in their language and the final video shows the diversity but also similarities from iGEM teams from all over the world. Check out the video below:
Logotype
All skin is beautiful and since our project focuses on skin we wanted to be creative. When it came to designing our logo (our face to the world) we wanted our logo to represent the beautiful diversity that skin has. See the result below:
Figure 5: Our team logotype with colours that represents the diversity of skin.