This years’ Maakfestival was held at the Groninger Forum and provided Dutch manufactures – in the broadest sense – who are living in the north of the Netherlands with the opportunity to excite teens about diverse technical projects. We had our own iGEM booth with various attributes from the laboratory, such as (properly sealed) Escherichia coli bacteria with Green Fluorescent Protein and talked about synthetic bacteria to interested people from every age group. Participants were invited to write their own opinion on bacteria, ranging from ‘cute’ to ‘useful’. Besides that Joana gave a short talk about iGEM and synthetic biology in one of the ‘maker talks’. Sometimes, we were even surprised what some children already knew about bacteria. We were really stoked to introduce the fascinating world of synthetic biology.

Artist in residence - 31 July - 4 August

In collaboration with KLAS (Knowledge Link through Arts and Science) and the University of Groningen we introduced Agnes Meyer - Brandis into our lab and the world of synthetic biology between July 31 and August 4. According to KLAS synthetic biology seems the perfect framework for artists to get inspired. Agnes wanted to gain insight in how synthetic biology could help trees walk to escape climate change. During the time she joined us we talked about the possibilities of synthetic biology, what DNA and proteins are and also about our project. We hope her week here has gained her new inspiration, and that we have been able to contribute to her exposition.

EVOLVE was set-up on the Noorderzon Performing Arts festival in collaboration with Science Linx, GELIFES (Groningse Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences) and the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). Here, it was demonstrated with various experiments and expositions how evolution works (more or less). An Evolution café was set up where people could meet each other while engaging the interesting topic of evolution. We participated on two days to talk about our project and synthetic biology.

We attended the 12th LAB Symposium in Egmond aan Zee on the 28th of August. This is a yearly scientific conference about Lactic Acid Bacteria. Thanks to the organizing committee we were able to attend the symposium for one day with three people of our team. This was a really interesting experience. It gave us the opportunity to present our poster during the poster sessions and to talk to researchers who are specialized in working with CRISPR-Cas, bacteriophages and Lactococcus lactis. We talked with Douwe van Sinderen, an expert in bacteriophage research ofthe University College Cork, and Sylvain Moineau, one of the key scientists in the discovery of CRISPR.

The Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute (GBB) is the center for biomolecular sciences at the University of Groningen. We were invited to present our project and display our poster for subsequent discussion sessions. This enabled us to outline our project idea to local scientists as well as receive questions that stakeholders could also possibly ask us.

After our collaboration, we were invited by the RIVM to join their event RIVM Kennisparade together with all other Dutch iGEM teams. Approximately 1500 visitors were present this day. We were part of the biotechnology section where we represented biotechnology in the future. We were excited that so many people were interested in our project and wanted to know what it was about. We had some great discussions with visitors about synthetic biology and the ethical aspects of it. Surprisingly, we got mostly positive reactions about our product design, even if it would be used in a factory!

We met with Ferdinand van der Graaf to discuss the game we are designing concerning synthetic biology safety. He works as a researcher at the UMCG hospital, as well as a teacher at a local highschool. In his teachings he uses a lot of educational games, and had previously designed a game to teach about natural selection. We talked about how to implement game elements in a balanced way while not sacrificing too much of learning elements. Furthermore, he recommended to stick to tried and true game elements that work, something we found to be true too.

On the 15th of September we provided a lecture for KIVI, which is the Dutch Royal Institute of Engineers. Around fifteen people attended the lecture, they all have different backgrounds: students, researchers and employees in the pharmaceutical industry. Something they had in common, they were all interested in our project. The lecture was given by Felix. He prepared a presentation, where he explained all the steps of our project, but also general aspects of the iGEM competition. After the lecture we had a discussion where everyone viewed there ideas on topics important to our project. For example, what changes would you make to our product design, would it be a problem for you if companies use our product on the factory floor, would you still buy the end product and so on. After all of the talking we went to the lab, where Matthijs gave them a nice tour. He showed all of our lab equipment and told something about the different techniques we use in the lab.

De Jonge Onderzoekers (The Young Researchers) aims to excite young kids, ranging from 8 to 18 years old, in the fields of science and technology. To this end, they organize various courses including the course Nature and Science. We contacted Richel Bilderbeek to give us some tips about preparing lessons for children from 10 to 12 years old. He is highly experienced in educating 7 till 18 year-olds. On the 22nd of September, two members of our team visited one of the extremely popular Friday evening course of Nature and Science, led by Richel in Groningen, to witness first-hand how to attract children’s interests when talking about biology or science in general. Afterwards, we talked with Richel and he provided us with many tips which were in the end extremely helpful when we conducted our own practices for primary school children. You can find more information about our own course below.

The Scholierenacademie organizes activities for primary school and high school students and this year, together with Stichting Openbaar Onderwijs Oost-Groningen (SOOOG), they set-off a new project which aims to interest East-Groningen primary school children in the university and Biological sciences. Together with project-leader Douwe van der Tuin we turned the project into reality. The general goal is informing the kids about the university. What do students do? What am I, a molecular biology student, doing in a laboratory? The Scholierenacademie wanted to start this project, because research has shown that kids from the eastern part of the province Groningen choose less often for higher education. By starting really early with informing these kids about the possibilities of the university, the Scholierenacademie hopes that children will choose more often to follow higher education after primary school.

We went to nine schools to give a guest lecture. A few days later, the children came to the lab to do some experiments themselves. We designed a one-hour guest lecture and a two hours practical at the Linnaeusborg, University of Groningen. In total, we welcomed over 200 primary school children between 9 October and 13 October. The local newspaper even dedicated a reporter to write an article (Dutch) about this joint venture.

Science Linx offers high school students in the Netherlands the possibility to engage with the Science and Engineering faculty of the University of Groningen. They organize and support various activities with the aim to excite kids about the beta-sciences. Science Linx has already been a Groningen iGEM sponsor for many years. In turn, we aid them with various project including helping high school students with their Profiel Werkstuk (Profile Assignment in English). We welcomed a total of 12 high school students which experimented in our lab based on their own ideas. Two groups wanted to study antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The others were interested in CRISPR and we let them participate in a small part of our own project! The Noorderzon EVOLVE participation was also in cooperation with Science Linx.

• Roos Honée & June Ying van Dam – Antibiotic resistance

  For our high school thesis we searched for some place to do our research. Our subject is about antibiotic resistance and of course it was not possible to do an experiment with antibiotic resistant bacteria at school. Besides, we thought it to be very interesting to do our own research in a real laboratory. Meintje has helped us very well while conducting our research. Her colleagues in iGEM have also meant a lot to us. We learned a lot in the four days we worked at the lab. Antibiotic cures were our main focus during our research. We have looked at different times and concentrations of a cure, to determine if the current cure could be shorter and/or with a lower concentration. We are extremely grateful that iGEM Gronignen has given us the opportunity to stand next to them in the lab. This has played a very important role in our research. We therefore thank them greatly and wish them good luck with their iGEM project.


• Anne de Ruijter & Susan van Houten – CRISPR

  Hi, we are Anne and Susan. We are both in the last year of high school and emailed the iGEM team of the University of Groningen, if we could join in with their research for our profile assignment (dutch: profiel werkstuk). The iGEM team has offered us this opportunity and we are looking back on two great days! We had excellent guidance from this friendly team. At the lab there was a nice atmosphere while the students were all working very hard and driven by their ground-breaking research. This was fun and motivating to see. After the time in the lab, we got all our questions answered, which was very nice. In short, a super fun and educational experience at the University of Groningen with the iGEM team!

During the summer we supervised two Honours Bachelor students with their own synthetic biology project.

• Honours students

  "For the Honours College, we wanted to perform a deepening research in the 2nd year. We wanted this research to be related to microbiology. So one of us then came with the idea to contact the iGEM team of Groningen. We told them that we would like to try to transform bacteria in a way that they would digest microplastics. We quickly got a response from the iGEM team and they stated that they were glad to let us do our research within their research group. A meeting was set up to meet with 2 PhD students to talk about our plans. The team was very helpful during this starting phase since we had never set up our own research yet. After a couple more meetings our plans took a more realistic shape due to the tips iGEM feasibility. After all these meetings it was time to start working in the lab. Here we got assigned a supervisor which we could ask questions and he helped us get started. The further we got into the 3 weeks of our research, the more responsibilities we got from the iGEM team. Working on your own in a lab on your own research was a new and very instructive experience. At first, we had to get used to this responsibility, because in our regular program all practicals are structured perfectly around you as a student, and so you do not come across the challenges of a real research. An example of this was our strain of bacteria, which was not as competent as we were used to. All in all, we learned a lot about dealing with unexpected complications during synthetic biology research. Therefore, our time with the iGEM team has enriched us with many new experiences."

For our safety proposal for the RIVM we said we would make a card game. The game had to be fairly simple to explain and quick to play since few people would otherwise put in the time. Inspired by such games as Boonanza and Sushi Go we quickly made a game where you would play dairy products worth some points and infect the products of other players to make them worth less.

It worked pretty well but it was deemed to be more fun than educational, especially after talking again to Jaco Westra. So we went looking for a different type of card game, a so called "serious game". First we had the idea to make an RPG style game more akin to Munchkin, where you would level up your "preparedness" to win and defeat synthetic biology inspired threats as a stakeholder. Preferably in a cooperative way, but making card or board games cooperative is a challenge in and of itself.

This proved to be way too much work and we needed help in design. We went to talk to Ferdinand van der Graaf who is a researcher and a teacher, and has incorporated games in his lessons to teach about evolution. This proved to be very fruitful and we talked at length about game mechanics and how they interact. The most important points he made were:

• Do not think too much about the "serious gaming" aspect, if a game is not fun enough to play there's no point.
• Especially children read fluff (the little info text on cards) text and take it to heart.
• To make a game coop you must include some mechanism external to players (something we did not end up using).
• To keep as close as possible to an existing game, since those games are already fun and balanced.
• To look at Machiavelli for inspiration, instead of a RPG game.

With this information we went back to the drawing board and made a completely new game. In this game you have to think about which stakeholder you want to be before the round starts and which other players want. As a stakeholder you then can play cards in 3 different areas: Regulations, Opinions or Research. You win the game if you get more than a certain amount of these. The game can be played with 3 to 6 players, and takes about 30 minutes to explain and play in one setting

The game as it is meshes quite well with the RIVM theme of "Thinking before doing", we presented this at the Kennisparade too. Of course we wanted to print it professionally, including fiches and instructions.