Team:Toulouse INSA-UPS/Education
Overview
Synthetic biology opens a field of possibilities to solve many issues encountered in society. However, it remains poorly known by most of the population and therefore not yet sufficiently explored. For example, synthetic biology is little exploited in the perfume industry, although the opportunities are huge. We have observed that this is mostly due to a lack of information and education on the subject. We have also identified during the project many challenges in the field of scent education.
This is why we created different materials and activities to address these issues. The most important part of our Human Practices work is the creation of an educational board game, “Elixio The Game”, that allows to balance the learning of biology and perfume, while exercising the sense of smell. We have also exchanged with blind or visually impaired people to think about how to make this game (and the knowledge it conveys) more inclusive and accessible. Intervention in a high school allowed us to confirm the educational aspect of the game and to get feedback to improve it. The second axis of our Human Practices activities is turned towards the use of phototrophs in synthetic biology. In collaboration with other iGEM teams, we have organized phototroph meet up series and a cyanobacteria symposium, and participated in the creation of a phototroph handbook. The third axis was to communicate as much as possible to the general public about our project and the iGEM competition in order to arouse curiosity, to make people interested in synthetic biology and to inform them about the possible applications. In this scope, we participated in the Exposcience Occitanie, recorded a podcast and communicated through different media such as press or social networks.
Introduction
ELIXIO has brought to light many issues around the field of scents and biology.
Scent education
We want to recreate the violet accord. However, will we be able to recognize the smell of violets? Are we able to differentiate between different scents without any help?
We wanted to test our nose:
Try to recognise these 5 everyday smells from different olfactory families
Is it easy? We invite you to test it at home. Without any visual aid, we realized that it was very difficult to recognize these commonplace scents. We also asked people around us. Only 5 out of 22 people managed to guess the five smells.
Moreover, we knew few things about the perfume industry when we embarked on this project.
Additionally, one of the major symptoms of the coronavirus was the loss of taste and smell, knowing that taste is actually mostly perceived through our olfactory sensory receptors. Many people affected by COVID-19 have lost these senses and struggle to regain those even months later. Some of us lost our senses of taste and smell periodically when we were affected by COVID-19 over a year ago. In just a few days, we realized the importance of these senses and thus understood all the issues about scent rehabilitation. There is a real issue around the accompaniment of odor education.
Synthetic biology education
When we wanted to explain our project to non-biologists, we quickly realized that concepts such as "synthetic biology" or "molecular biology" are very vague or even unknown to many people. The general public often has preconceived ideas and a bad image of synthetic biology, often due to a lack of knowledge.
When we thought about the application of synthetic biology in the perfume industry, we tried to find past iGEM projects that had potentially tackled this subject. To our surprise, we did not find a lot. The use of synthetic biology in the perfume industry is in fact still very innovative and yet to build.
We also noticed a lack of knowledge in these areas with the appearance of vaccines for COVID-19. Many people said they did not have the knowledge to understand how the vaccine works in their body. For example, we heard confusions between DNA and RNA.
ELIXIO THE GAME
Aim: to provide an educational tool to learn about synthetic biology and perfumes, and to train our nose to recognize odors.
Target: high school, students, teachers, general public
GOAL
"Elixio The Game" is a board game that aims to take up the challenge of teaching the basics of synthetic biology from high school students to adults, while at the same time educating about odors.
The player’s goal is to be the first to reconstitute his own perfume by collecting the plasmids that allow producing the desired odors. Each player has to be careful to protect his fragrance-producing yeast. Events can happen at any time during the game.
WHY A GAME?
We wanted to find a way to manage both knowledge issues at the same time in an effortless and funny way. According to many studies, the game approach is a very interesting educational tool, especially for young people. It is often recognized as more effective than traditional methods. Gamification increases the motivation to learn.(Butler et al. 2016 ; Felszeghy et al. 2019 ; Moradian and Mehraein Nazdik 2019) We therefore decided to create a board game where players will have to smell and guess as many odors as possible to try to collect "odor-vectors". To get access to these scent challenges, they will have to answer to general knowledge questions about synthetic biology and the perfume industry, and perform virtual genetic events or culture disruption through cards.
This playful approach makes it possible to learn without really making an effort, while creating a social link since it is played in groups. After a difficult period with COVID-19, which forced us to interact at distance and which strongly affected our social life, we have chosen a board game to keep the friendly side and to encourage real social interactions and not virtual ones.
Elixio the Game could be used in high schools and universities by teachers, but is also suitable for curious adults and teenagers.
It allows mobilizing knowledge and the acquiring new notions about:
HOW TO PLAY
This game includes a wooden board, pawns, a dice, two faced-tokens, various cards and vials containing essential oils.
The players are researchers who have to modify a yeast in order to produce the odors that make up their perfume by synthetic biology. They start in the centre of the board corresponding to a yeast. The aim is to go to the "Olfactory families" squares (and the extremity of each lanes) and try to guess an odor by smelling a vial at random from among the essential oils belonging to the corresponding olfactory family.
In order to obtain the desired scents, the player has to guess which perfume he is smelling. This system allows training the nose and discovering new smells often used in perfumery.
To get to these squares, the players roll the dice and go through other squares where they can draw cards: “Genetics” (symbolized by the DNA molecules), “Event” (Erlenmeyer flasks) and “Question” (interrogation marks). These squares allow the player to more rapidly progress, to trap other players, or to defend himself from other players traps.
Through the “Event” and “Genetics cards, players explore many notions of synthetic biology and will be able to understand the impact and benefits of modifying their yeast genome. The "Question" cards allow players to enrich their general knowledge in biology and perfumery.
To win the game, the players must collect all the odors defined by the “Perfume” card they were given at the start, and integrate the corresponding plasmids into the genome of their yeast. This will allow them to approach the notion of microbial engineering.
Most importantly, we wanted to make this game accessible to everyone in order to easily recreate it at home or to use it as an inspiration to create one’s own game. Thus, the complete game elements information and code can be downloaded here:
By downloading this file, you will have:
-
the game board
-
all of the cards (in French and English)
-
the 3D file of the yeast and token
-
the playing rules (in French and English)
SOME TIPS
If you want to play at home, you can print the cards and the board on standard paper. You can easily find essential oil kits at low prices on the internet. If it is difficult for you to find the exact scents, it is possible to replace them with similar scents. For example, you can replace the essential oils of aromatics with fruit juices, those of flowers with real flowers or cosmetics that are close to the smell, etc. The game works with all types of scents! As for the tokens and counters, you can play with classic tokens and counters too.
BOARD
After having designed our board, we had a wooden board engraved with a laser by the students of the FabLab of our school (INSA Toulouse). It was important for us to work closely with these students to also value their work and their association.
PIECES
The pieces for moving around the board represent yeast seen in cross-section. Making a cross-sectional representation was a way for us to allow the player to get familiar with the structure of a yeast. They were made using a 3D printer.
ESSENTIAL OILS
In order to train our olfactory sense, we included essential oils belonging to the 5 olfactory families represented on the board. There are 7 olfactory families: floral, citrus, oriental, woody, chypre and fougere. The first five, which are represented on the board, are the historical families and those most commonly found in perfumery. In 1945, the classification evolved with the addition of chypre and fougere. ("Les 7 familles olfactives", 2020) Many essential oil kits exist and are affordable. People wishing to play can easily find them on the internet to complete their game.
"PERFUME" CARDS AND TOKENS
“Perfume” cards are dealt at the beginning of the game. The names and compositions are inspired by real perfumes. Thanks to this card, the player can directly understand the olfactory pyramid of a perfume: top note, heart note and base note. Each circle represents an odor-plasmid that must be recovered to reconstitute the perfume. As soon as the player has managed to collect an odor-plasmid, he places his token on the corresponding circle. If the player has integrated the plasmid in the genome by going back to the yeast central square, the token can be turned over to the "integrated" side.
"EVENT" CARDS
“Event” cards can give players an advantage or disadvantage. Some of them, such as "addition of neomycin to the medium" or "acidification of the medium", can block the player for a turn or slow down his movement. Others such as "Enriched medium" or "Super Integron" can benefit the player by allowing him to move faster or by having the possibility to integrate his odor-plasmid without going back to the yeast square. These cards allow to discover events that can happen during the experiments but also the importance of having an adapted medium for the chosen microorganism.
"GENETICS" CARDS
There are two types of "Genetics" cards: Plasmid and Regulation. Plasmid cards allow the player to obtain a plasmid that confers resistance to their yeast to particular events that may occur at any time in the game. If the player encounters a "Phleomycin addition to medium" event but has a "Phleomycin resistance" plasmid, the event will have no impact on his game. Regulation cards can allow an induction of certain metabolic pathways, thus allowing the player to decrease the number of odor-plasmids to collect, or of vials to smell. These cards help to understand the use of vectors and the notions of induction in synthetic biology.
"QUESTION" CARDS
The questions concern the world of perfumery and synthetic biology. If the player answers the question on the card correctly, he can play again. The questions are more or less complicated. Whether you are an expert or not, we are sure that you will always learn something new!
FIRST FEEDBACK
We asked 5 friends to test the game to see how effective it is and to find ways to improve
it.
Click on them to know who they are!
Jeanne
5th year student in engineering school in Process, water and environment engineering, specialist in green urbanism
Jade
5th year student in engineering school in Process, water and environment engineering, specialist in green urbanism
Marie
5th year student in engineering school in Biological Engineering, double-diploma in innovation management school
Justine
veterinary assistant
Mathis
5th year student in engineering school in Process, Water and Environmental Engineering
Before starting
What do you know about synthetic biology, the history of perfume and its composition?
Everyone had heard of synthetic biology. Some mentioned a "modification of the primary nature" or "of the constituents" of something living, and others knew more precise concepts such as PCR, thanks to their training. Regarding knowledge of perfumery, "there is a film called Le Parfum. And Grasse is the place of perfumes in France", said Jeanne. Marie mentioned the terms "top note, heart note and base note".
Could you recognize these 5 scents from 5 different olfactory families belonging to the game?
Most of the scents seemed familiar to them but it was very difficult or impossible to put an exact name on the essential oil smelled. Some said: "everything seems to smell the same".
Their feedback
All 5 enjoyed playing the game. The game is very well constructed and all the genetic events in the game and the anecdotes complement their knowledge. They were able to see the use of plasmids, or the principles of regulation that had not been mentioned during our preliminary exchange. Concerning the scents, they were surprised by their progress and realized that finally, with practice, they could discern the differences more and more.
These testimonies show that it is possible to learn new notions through the game ELIXIO THE GAME, or to complete those we already have.
Points for improvement
Their advice
"Some explanations or questions are sometimes difficult to understand if you don't have basic knowledge."
"It would be interesting to be able to try to recognize a smell even if the olfactory family of the box does not interest us to win. This would allow us to continue practicing."
"To gain time, it would be better to play with 4 players and to facilitate some movements."
Our modification
Put a glossary in the game rules that allow a better understanding of the terms encountered.
Add a rule: If the player is on an "olfactory family" square that does not interest him to compose his perfume, he can still try to guess a smell of this family. If he succeeds, he can play again.
Change some rules to facilitate the movements and to integrate the odor-plasmids.
EXCHANGES WITH VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE
Aim : to adapt our game to a visually impaired audience
Target : visually impaired people
The goal of our game was to bring knowledge about the world of perfume and biology. So, the concept of our game was based on the odor recognition and on biological knowledge. As nothing need the sense of vision in these principles, we think that it could be great to try to adapt the game to visually impaired people. Moreover, we hypothesized that they would be better trained and more able to recognize odors.
In order to understand how we could adapt our game for visually impaired people and how they are educated to odors, we do an intervention in an association for the visually impaired (UNADEV). They were kind enough to welcome us in their offices and to gather members to test our game.
More able to recognize odors?
We asked them questions about their sensitivity to odors. We thought that since one of their senses was impaired they might have a more developed sense of smell and that they might benefit from odor education. This proved to be wrong: they explained to us that they did not have a particularly developed sense of smell but rather that they were more sensitive to it. Not being able to see or seeing badly, they concentrate more on other things in the environment such as smells and are therefore more sensitive to them than seeing people.
How to improve our game?
We tested our game with four persons regularly participating in the association. This intervention was very constructive, they gave many tips to improve our game and adapt it to their disability.
When we arrived, we knew that our cards were not adapted at all and we thought that the easiest way was to transcribe them into Braille. However, we were wrong. They explained to us that actually only 2 % of visually impaired people was able to read the Braille. They told us that young people easily learn Braille but people who become visually impaired later in their lives have more difficulties, and many never manage to learn this language.
For many reasons, Braille is not well adapted. For example, people who do manual labor may have less sensitivity in their fingertips, making it difficult for them to read Braille. In addition, the texts on our cards were too long to be translated into Braille: the cards would be too big.
For all these reasons, they told us that it would be more adapted to do vocal card. They spoke to us about system like “Pen frame”, that actually pen with pre-record audio. The concept is to made card with code that can be scan by the pen and launch the audio corresponding to the card.
In the same spirit, a system with a central box could read cards with codes and serve as a voice board.
They gave us feedback about our perfume card. They suggested making 3D circles in relief on the "Perfume" cards in order to position the tokens indicating the collection of odor-plasmid correctly
About the tokens, they can feel the differences between the two sides, one smooth and one with an engraved lock. The color of the tokens was not optimal since they are the same color as the card they will be placed on. For the blind people, this does not change anything, but for the visually impaired, it can be difficult to discern the two elements.
The yeast pieces can be improved too. We made our pieces in 4 different colors but that this is not optimal enough. It would be necessary to make 4 pieces of different shapes or to add different marks on the back of the pieces so that they could be easily recognized with the fingers.
We had our tray engraved on a wooden board. They could follow the engraving but it was not deep enough for them to recognize the squares on the board.
They felt it would be easier to recognize a texture made in 3D than an engraving.
It would also be necessary to adapt the board with a system allowing to lock the pieces in the squares to prevent accidental shift of the pawns.
We brought dice with small engravings for the numbers. They could recognize the numbers on the dice but they would need a larger dice to make it simpler.
They also gave us an overall feedback on the concept of the game. For them, it was interesting to mix knowledge of smells and biology. The level of the questions on the cards was not always appropriate for them. They suggested to us to implement several levels of difficulty in the questions or to propose team games.
They were very excited about our game and our initiative to adapt it to visually impaired people. In fact, there are not many suitable games for visually impaired people. They were interested in helping us to adapt the game, testing it again and supporting us in its production.
We will not be able to implement these recommendations for this edition of iGEM, but we hope that future teams will be able to use them to better adapt their efforts to the visually impaired.
HIGH SCHOOL INTERVENTION
Aim : to improve and test our game "ELIXIO THE GAME"
Target : high school, teachers
We intervened in a class of high school students in order to share our project with them, to motivate them in the future to study synthetic biology and/or to participate in iGEM, and also to test our game.
We had the chance to go to the Pierre Paul Riquet high school, where Thomas and Maxence have studied. We worked for two hours with a group of about 25 high school students in the science track. One group listened to a presentation while the other group tested the game, and vice versa.
Presentation
We had prepared a presentation, including an introduction to synthetic biology, the iGEM competition and our topic. They were very responsive to the presentation and participated. We created a little Kahoot to see what they learned from the presentation.
The notion of synthetic biology seemed clearer at the end of the talk. Two students in particular seemed very interested in what Thomas was explaining. Maybe new iGEMers?
Game test
This was an opportunity for them to learn some biology knowledge that they had not yet seen in class (plasmids, resistance genes, enzymes, etc.) and also to learn about the world of perfume that they knew much less.
During the game, some of the students had difficulty recognizing "common" smells such as vanilla. This was an opportunity to talk with them about the sensitivity to smells and the difference that could be found depending on the production of the scents. For example, vanilla found industrially is often made up of only one molecule, vanillin, which can present a difference with the essential oil that we had in the game which contains several molecules and therefore has a more complex vanilla smell.
They really loved the concept of the game, mixing scents and questions. It was difficult to get them to pack up the game! They told us that they would love to see the game released and play it more often.
Their reactions are very encouraging and show a real enthusiasm around this educational game. Our goal of creating a tool to learn about synthetic biology and perfumes in a fun and effortless way has been achieved. We are convinced that it has created new vocations at the frontier of synthetic biology and the perfume industry.
CYANOBACTERIA SYMPOSIUM
Aim : to communicate and exchange about cyanobacteria and our projects
Target : students, iGEMers, scientists
Part of our project is based on the engineering of a cyanobacterium (S. elongatus). In collaboration with iGEM Pune, iGEM HKU and iGEM Stony Brook, we decided to organize a meetup to share our projects and schedule useful workshops around cyanobacteria. Our first goal was to present our project to cyanobacteria experts to obtain constructive feedback. The second goal was to enable science communication about cyanobacteria, and in particular to provide valuable information to the iGEM teams working with these organisms. All participants seemed very interested and enthusiastic about our project!
PHOTOTROPH MEET UP SERIES AND HANDBOOK
Aim : to promote the use of phototrophic organisms in synthetic biology and learn more about them
Target : students, iGEMers, scientists
The use of phototrophs in biotechnology keeps increasing. The advantages, especially for industrial applications, are numerous. (Our Design page explains more precisely the interests of working with cyanobacteria). However, their use involves many challenges. Therefore, we worked with several iGEM teams from all over the world to identify these challenges and to confront our solution to overcome them. (See Collaborations).
We created a global community of teams working with phototrophs called “iGEM Phototrophs –Overgrow the World”.
This is one of our most important collaborations. We deeply committed ourselves in this collaborative project.
Click on each sticker to know what we have done!
Community Sticker
We are part of the community and have participated in events and discussions on slack.
Handbook Sticker
We have written a part of the Handbook.
Organisation Sticker
We participated in meetings to organize the meet-ups.
Presentation Sticker
We presented our project at the first meet-up.
Meet-up series
In collaboration with all these teams, we organized several meet-ups on phototrophic organisms. The aim was to promote the use of phototrophic organisms in synthetic biology and to learn more about them. These meet-ups aimed at specialists, but it also allowed us to provide elements that could be decisive for the iGEM teams and their projects. For example, it enabled us to meet specialists whom we contacted later to help us solve problems encountered with our cyanobacteria cultures.
Our instructor Denis Jallet and our advisor Amandine Lucchin participated in the second meet-up and gave advice in molecular biology on plants and cyanobacteria.
Handbook
During the meet-up series, we realized with the other teams that working with phototrophs poses several problems, which differ from the work with heterotrophic organisms like bacteria or yeast. The methods are weakly standardized and communicated in the scientific community.
We have created a handbook that will be a help for future generations of phototrophe-using iGEM teams. This document is collaborative: different teams of the community have written a part, and the next teams could modify and complete it.
This Handbook of more than 100 pages is the result of an important collaborative work with 11 iGEM teams. It was a very rewarding experience!
We can imagine that this guide will also be of interest for researchers, students or engineers who wish to embark on the study of phototrophs.
In this Handbook you can find:
- How to work with different types of phototrophs: algae, cyanobacteria, higher plants.
- How to do transformation and cloning.
- Standardization propositions.
- Protocols.
- And also modelling, biosafety and past projects.
Our team wrote the cyanobacteria transformation part using knowledge acquires with our project. The cyanobacteria symposium allowed us to enrich our knowledge and thus helped us to write this part. You can flip through the Handbook just here:
Exposcience Occitanie
Aim : to communicate about synthetic biology and its application in the perfume industry
Target : middle school, high school, students, teachers, general public
We presented our project for the first time during the Exposcience Occitanie. The Exposcience is an event which invites young people to present their scientific research project. This year, because of the sanitary conditions, the event was held online on zoom and youtube on June the 4th and 5th. This was the first time we tried to make our project understandable for everyone. It was exciting to see how interested people were in our project through our final quiz and the different questions that were asked.
Click on the picture to see our intervention!
Podcast
Aim: to communicate about synthetic biology and its application in the perfume industry
Target: middle school, high school, students, teachers, general public
Click on the picture to hear our podcast!
We recorded a podcast for Campus FM. The purpose of this series of podcasts called "Pose ta science" was to promote student projects that aim to raise awareness about a scientific issue. We were able to present our project but also to deconstruct preconceived ideas about GMOs.
Project Promotion
Aim: to communicate about synthetic biology and its application in the perfume industry
Target: high school, students, iGEMers, scientists, general public
Communication is essential for us in science. We made an important effort to communicate in order to transmit as much knowledge as possible to a variety of public.
Promoting our project and sharing our experiences were also
a way for us to:
- show the possibilities of synthetic biology.
- make our project and the production of perfume by microorganisms accepted.
- allow exchanges with other teams or specialists and thus to be able to benefit from their knowledge.
Social networks
We regularly communicated on social networks, especially on Instagram and Facebook. It was important for us to maintain contact with those who follow our project but also with the other iGEM teams. This allowed us to meet many teams and thus to build projects together, especially concerning the work on cyanobacteria. It was also a tool to raise awareness among connected people and the younger generations.
Press
We have also been published in newspapers. This way of communication permits to reach a larger public. The interest of these articles is also to arouse curiosity and to generate interest for synthetic biology applied to the perfume industry, and for the iGEM competition. Thanks to these articles, an important fragrance company approached us to know more about the project and to offer their help, and we hope to have created some vocations among the young people who read the articles.
Promotion video
The Promotion Video made for the competition was broadcasted in our schools and partner labs. We also shared it with our friends and on the networks. We tried to make a clear and educational video so that it would be accessible to as many people as possible, specialists or not.
Newsletters
We sent a newsletter every month during the summer in order to keep all our partners informed of the progress of our project. Maintaining a link with them allows to facilitate the exchanges and also the understanding of our work.
References
Butler, Kendall, Bonnie Raingruber, Eric Butler, et Machelle Wilson. 2016.
« Impact of Education on School-aged Children’s Knowledge of and Participation in “The
Choking Game” ».
Research & reviews. Journal of nursing and health sciences 2 (2): 18‑25.
Felszeghy, Szabolcs, Sanna Pasonen-Seppänen, Ali Koskela, Petteri Nieminen, Kai Härkönen,
Kaisa M. A. Paldanius, Sami Gabbouj, et
al. 2019. « Using online game-based platforms to improve student performance and engagement
in histology teaching ». BMC Medical
Education 19 (juillet): 273. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-019-1701-0.
« Les 7 familles olfactives ». 2020. Carrément Belle (blog). 15 septembre 2020.
https://www.carrementbelle.com/blog/fr/2020/09/16/les-7-familles-olfactives/.
Moradian, Mohamad Javad, et Zahra Mehraein Nazdik. 2019. « Game versus Lecture-Based
Learning in Disaster Risk Education; An Experience on Shiraz High School Students ».
Bulletin of Emergency & Trauma 7 (2): 112‑17. https://doi.org/10.29252/beat-070204.
