Introduction
While working on our project, we paid special attention to several areas outside of our regular research. Next to focussing on the safety and sustainability of our project, it was important to us to communicate science in every imaginable way. In order to do so we tried to make our project accessible for as many people as possible. This is the reason why we also concentrated on inclusivity and education. In the figure below you can see an overview of all the award areas that we have been working on:
Below you can read more about the work we have done in all these different areas.
Best Education Award
We received this and many similar comments in our public survey as an answer to the question on how to improve science communication. From this, we conclude that many people wish for a better science education program, especially starting at a younger age. Therefore, we decided to put a strong focus on science education. We are certain that involvement of the general public is an important aspect of a scientific project. For this, it is important to promote science education – in all age groups.
Our goal was to cover all age groups with our programs. Thus, we recorded a podcast with various scientific topics, held a webinar on sustainability in laboratories and held workshops for students about biotechnology. To include even the youngest, we have produced radio plays to awaken their interest in science.
Tonie-Boxes
We believe that it is never too early to encourage interest in science among the younger generations in a playful way.
We created radio plays for children aged three to six years to introduce them to science in a child-friendly way. Therefore, we have written and recorded two stories that cover scientific topics on a very simple level. To share our stories, we used “Tonie-Boxes”. Tonie-Boxes are the new generation of audio players.
We distributed them to multiple kindergartens and held reading sessions there. We also prepared coloring pictures related to the main characters of our stories for the kids. More information, as well as pictures and feedback about these reading sessions can be found on our subpage Education.
You can find more details about the content of our two stories “Phage Phips on adventure journey” and “Bacillus Becky on search for friends” on our subpage Education. There you can also find the written version of both stories in English and German, as well as audio samples in German. In addition to scientific aspects, central themes such as friendship and diversity are addressed through those stories.
To make it easier to adopt the concept of radio plays, we wrote a guide on “Tonie-Boxes: An innovative way to inspire kids for science”. With this, we hope that more iGEM Teams can build upon our experience to teach science to kids in a simple and playful way.
Biotech Workshop
We prepared and held a workshop for high school students to introduce them to university in general, as well as encourage them to consider biotechnology as a field of study.
Besides explaining and discussing life as a university student with them, we talked about different biotechnological topics and applications. Here the students could show what they already know about science and ask questions.
The students also had the opportunity to isolate DNA from different fruits. Thereby, the students were introduced to scientific work including the theoretical and the practical part of it.
Podcast
We have continued the podcast “Genomenal” from last year in which we explain and discuss different scientific topics. To reach a broader audience, we decided to record the podcast in English. We have intentionally avoided technical terms and complicated processes from the podcast in order to make it more understandable for our listeners. At the same time, we have made the podcast entertaining, so it is fun to listen to. The podcast is mainly about us and our project. Therefore iGEM, biofilms and also phages play a big role in the podcast. In addition, we also wanted to convey other interesting topics. That is why, for example, we produced an episode about antibiotics or bacteria in space.
We have developed various educational programs to involve every age group from young to old in science education. With our radio play, workshop and podcast, we have succeeded in arousing interest in science in all age groups. In doing so, we have responded to the public’s desire for better education.
Inclusivity Award
Science is everybody’s party. Inclusion of as many people as possible is of great concern for us. Therefore, we put a lot of effort into creating a wiki that is easily accessible.
We not only explicitly designed our color concept to be perceptible to color-blind people, but also created an easy-to-navigate wiki. Our design utilizes a navigation menu that employs a dual-help-concept, always highlighting information in two different ways. This concept is also used throughout our texts and figures. To avoid distraction for the reader, all our animations are stoppable and repeatable. This makes information extraction easy and enables everyone to comprehend our wiki in their own pace.
Additionally, we had an agency translate a summary of our project and wiki to plain language. These texts correspond to the B1 language level and are understandable for 95% of people, further increasing the accessibility of our wiki – especially for people outside the field of SynBio.
In our inclusivity guide “Guide for better Wiki accessibility”, future iGEM Teams can learn from the information we gathered during our mission to make the scientific community more inclusive.
Best Integrated Human Practices
Science is and has always been of social importance and consequently has to be handled as a social matter. For this reason, Human Practices and its important component Integrated Human Practices is an essential part of iGEM. Its mission is to identify the impact of a scientific project on our society and world.
In order to do so, it is of utter importance to consistently assess how your project is received by the general public and by various stakeholders. Their insights, whether it is fear, advice or approval, need to be included into the evaluation and the execution of our project.
To ensure that our work and its presentation are structured, we looked at different frameworks which we could use as an exemplary model for developing our own strategy.
We found the framework created by Prof. Richard Owen1 for responsible research and innovation, that has already been used by the iGEM Team Exeter in 20172, called AREA (Anticipate, Reflect, Engage, Act)3 most suited as an inspiration for the creation of our own simplified framework.
For our own framework we adjusted the AREA framework namesake CEA framework that is implemented in many managements methods to fit our requirements. We called it CEA just like the framework used in management methods in the agile project4, but in our case, CEA standing for Consider, Evaluate and Adapt.
If you want to find out more about it just click here.
With the help of the CEA framework our Human Practices team made an extensive effort to evaluate the potential impacts of our project PHIRE BYRD on the society and the global community. For the evaluation we relied on the insights from the general public, scientists, ethicists and government officials whom we conducted interviews with.
What have we learned from our Human Practices work for our project? What did affect us the most?
For one, in the discussion with Prof. Dr. Fabian Commichau we learned that we do not need to worry about lactonases degrading our AHL but should adapt our wet lab design to test for cytotoxicity with a wider range of AHL concentrations. Moreover, he directed us to Prof. Dr. Anke Becker, who explained to us that it is highly likely for our AHL to diffuse through the Gram-positive cell wall of B. subtilis and how to design an experiment to confirm it.
Other experts like Prof. Dr. Beat Lutz taught us how to orientate both mutant lox sites to achieve an inversion of our promoter cassette.
Also, we found out that the rrnB terminator is a strong and universal terminator for the termination of the transcription of any Bacillus gene, which is why we used rrnB terminators within our cassette design for working in B. subtilis. This was achieved through the interview with Prof. Dr. Jan-Willem Veening. And with the help of Prof. Dr. Grzegorz Węgrzyn, we redesigned our genetic circuit for the phage release using RecA730.
Furthermore, we embraced with the help of Prof. Dr. Alfred Nordmann, an expert in the philosophy of science, the social responsibility of scientific work. Therefore, we carried and aligned our Human Practices with the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework of the European Union.
These were not the only interviews we have done. If you want to know more about all the people we talked to and what we talked about just visit our Integrated Human Practices page.
Safety Award
As a team we decided to tackle the challenge of designing a project intended to be used outside of the lab. The first question that arose our minds was: How will we make it as safe as possible?
Firstly, we want to mention the high specificity of phages. These are targeting only the regarding pathogens without damaging non-pathogenic microbioms. Bacteriophages only endanger bacteria as they need their resources to reproduce. By using strongly regulated phage expression, our project has little to no possible negative impact on human health, as phages only attack bacteria. Moreover, antibiotics usually kill different species of bacteria, while bacteriophages attack only pathogenic bacteria, without affecting the beneficial ones.
Using a promoter that is originally part of a QS signal cascade for our kill-switch, we can bind cell viability to signaling molecules only found within the biofilm, like the ComX pheromone, which is specific for B. subtilis. By using the Cre-Lox system as the base of our inversion system, we can control when the cell becomes biofilm-dependent. Regarding biosecurity, our kill-switch cannot be misused, as late or reprogrammed activation of the switch will lead to the loss of its functional structure.
Click here to know more about how we approached the safety aspect of our project.
Best Sustainable Development Impact
Climate change is already threatening the world. Thus, it is urgent to act now! As young scientists, we want to help making scientific research more sustainable (SDG 13).
Therefore, we decided to achieve a local impact by raising awareness for sustainable laboratory work with strong focus on sustainable consumption (SDG12). We analyzed issues originating from scientific research such as single-use plastic consumables, CO2 footprint and energy consumption of devices. Based on the input of various experts, we held a “Greener Labs” coffee lecture, provided on our wiki, to accomplish green changes at our university. Hence, we could inspire students and exchanged innovative ideas. Also, we connected with the sustainability office of our university and were able to contribute to the establishment of a “Sustainable Lab Initiative” with professors, PhDs and students from the scientific faculties. The aim is to draw up a concept addressing sustainable goals for greener laboratories at our campus.
Best Software Tool
What is the most important part of iGEM that has to be perfect at the end of the year? Correct – The Wiki! All the hardship and commitment of the team is shown here. But why does it have to be so hard and difficult to work on it? It is simply outdated.
We believe that this should be a thing of the past!
That is why we wrote GoGEM – a tool written in GO that enables teams to design their wiki like many other websites. GoGEM provides an interface between iGEM and WordPress, the most used content management system in the world. It is able to automatically upload a complete WordPress page to iGEM, including the correct upload of media, JavaScript, CSS and other files. At the same time all links are replaced to ensure full functionality. Interested? Check out our wiki page to get a full overview on GoGEM!
Best Model
A major part of our project was the design of a genetic circuit that allowed sensing of certain pathogens by responding to specific signaling molecules. According to engineering principles, the goal of our model was the simulation of our circuit’s expected behavior when probed in the lab. In this way, we want to improve the design of our genetic constructs as well as gain a deeper understanding of the molecular processes inside our system. Knowledge of the relationship between the amount of extracellular signaling molecules as input and the number of proteins as output is crucial for the design of our genetic circuit. Therefore, we developed a deterministic model in which the respective molecular processes are represented as ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Based on equations from the Modeling Webinars of the iGEM Engineering Committee, we also used a simplified and easier to use mathematical function which summarizes the ODEs.
- 1. Professor Richard Owen. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). [accessed 2021 Oct 7]. https://epsrc.ukri.org/about/people/richardowen/
- 2. Silver Criteria: Responsible Research Innovation. iGEM Exeter 2017. [accessed 2021 Oct 7]. https://2017.igem.org/Team:Exeter/HP/Silver
- 3. Anticipate, reflect, engage and act (AREA). The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). [accessed 2021 Oct 7]. https://epsrc.ukri.org/research/framework/area/
- 4. Ren J, Yusuf Y, Burns N. Agile partner selection: a hierarchical model and empirical investigation. ResearchGate. 2005 Jan 5 [accessed 2021 Oct 15]. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228900797_Agile_partner_selection_a_hierarchical_model_and_empirical_investigation