Team:BostonU/Engagement
ENGAGEMENT AND OUTREACH
From the start of our project, we focused on sharing our work and starting conversations about synthetic biology with our community. During the summer, we facilitated an outreach event called Summer Pathways along the BU Hardware Team and the STEM Pathways organization. STEM Pathwaysis a new outreach organization at Boston University with the objective to inspire, mentor, train, and empower current and future generations of students, with a focus on underrepresented groups.
The purpose of Summer Pathways was to introduce a group of 20 female high school students to synthetic biology. We organized and led four activities: Plasmid Design, Microfluidic Chip Design, Gel Electrophoresis, and a Bioethics Forum. In the Plasmid Design workshop, we showed them our plasmid repository on Benchling and sequences of plasmids that we actually used in the lab. We taught them the theory behind cloning parts into a backbone using restriction enzymes through the use of paper plasmids and restriction enzyme scissors.
In the Microfluidic Chip Design Workshop, ran in collaboration with the BU Hardware team, the students were given a brief information session about what microfluidic chips. Then the BU Hardware team helped the students design microfluidic chips out of cardboard. During the Gel Electrophoresis workshop, we brought the students into our lab and taught them how to load a gel using colored dye. We ran the gel and illustrated how the colors separated, explaining that this is analogous to how it appears when DNA fragments separate out based on size.
In the Bioethics Forum, we brought up several controversial topics in synthetic biology. The students engaged in conversations about gene editing techniques like CRISPR as well as genetically modified food. In one instance, these conversations led to even deeper questions about the nature of life itself.
We realized after this workshop that lab techniques such as gel electrophoresis and plasmid design are easier to explain in person with a demonstration than simply reading about them. Gel Electrophoresis and plasmid design are common techniques used by biologists, but explaining how they works can be challenging. We anticipate that this challenge would extend and worsen when trying to explain our own project, as the level of specificity increases. We wondered if there was a way to bridge this gap and improve our ability to explain synthetic biology processes and our own project without getting bogged down in technicalities.
We decided that this problem could be solved through a different form of communication. During our research of possible mediums, we realized the utility of step-by-step protocol videos that are easily accessible, and so we decided to enter the JoVE Film Your Research Contest. In our video, we detail how we use the cell-free (TX-TL) system and provide a theoretical understanding of how it works. Our video placed among the Top 15 Critically Acclaimed videos, and we were one of only two undergraduate teams recognized in the Top 10 Finalists and Top 15 Critically Acclaimed videos picked from hundreds of other applicants. As a result, our team was asked to continue developing short videos for other labs in the BU community. This was the first step we took in making our project more accessible, and we are happy to see that our approach has inspired others as well.
In August, we had the opportunity to visit Gingko Bioworks, a biotechnology startup in Boston. We saw work done by a visiting artist who was using bacteria to dye fabrics. We learned that Gingko Bioworks uses art made with or about synthetic biology to spark conversations with the community, and thought this was a fantastic idea. With our focus on engaging the community, we developed an art project that could be used to start conversations about synthetic biology. Titled “Circadia Synthetica,” the theme of our art is synthetic modification related to circadian rhythms. Specifically, the project explores three layers of circadian rhythms - in bacteria, plants, and humans - and how existing cycles on Earth could be modified to enable human life on Mars.
This project’s main goal was to use art to dialogue with the general public concerning potential applications of synthetic biology. We hope that using art will make the ideas more accessible to people unfamiliar with the topics. Specific conversation topics we wanted to bring up were bioethics and how the portrayal of synthetic biology through different mediums and tones has a large impact on public opinion.
We presented preliminary sketches and painting work at the STEM Pathways Fall Dinner and Dialogue to start this important conversation. The audience was composed of college professors, high school educators, graduate and undergraduate researchers, and local community members. Part of our art project shows flowers that have been synthetically modified to change color based on the time of day. In response to this, some people voiced frustration that synthetic biology was being used to for what they saw as small changes, instead of being leveraged for more relevant applications such as curing diseases.
Pending Institutional Review Board approval, we plan to place the art project at different locations in Boston and observe how people interact with it. We would hope to engage some viewers in conversations about synthetic biology presented through the art. We posted samples of the project across different social media platforms to see if we would receive any feedback from our community. A few responses have indicated surprise at the potential applications in space, and uncertainty about the ethics of genetically modifying humans. We would love for others to spread our art, talk about it with friends and family, and come see it at the exhibition space during the Jamboree.
From our conversations we realized that there is a potential flaw in how foundational advance projects in synthetic biology are being portrayed to the public. We need to show why applications such as color changing flowers are important. We need to emphasize that developing the tools to respond to circadian rhythms is what is relevant and impactful, not the color changing flowers themselves. Our art project tries to approach this topic by showing examples of how foundational research in synthetically modified circadian rhythms could be used to improve the chances of human survival. As a foundational advance team, we understand that we need to make clear the necessity and importance of foundational research. Our goal in our interactions with the community, including our wiki and presentation at iGEM, is to frame our project in terms of how our foundational advance can define tools that in the future could be used to accomplish groundbreaking innovations.
