Team:UCL/Public Engagement
Public Engagement
Introduction
Synthetic Biology is a relatively new field of science. It amalgamates many disciplines from the fields of biology and engineering. However, many people do not have a defined knowledge on what synthetic biology, which creates a scope for further misconceptions about the science. To resolve public misconceptions of synthetic biology and to spread knowledge about iGEM and its principles, we attempted to engage the public in a variety of ways.
Building with Biology
In order to be able to understand how to engage audience effectively, we spoke to Dr Elpida Makrygianni who runs the Pre-University Engineering Education Outreach at the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences (insert pic). She told us about the importance of understanding our target audience, which was the first step to engaging them effectively, in our topic of interest. She suggested that using demonstrations or interactive activities were suitable for most audiences, however, it would be more appropriate for our team to select an audience and tailor each activity that we plan to their needs.
By educating people about our work and about synthetic biology we aspired to inspire a new generation of synthetic biologists. Promoting accessibility to science is a major part of many of the public engagement activities we conducted. Following Elpida’s guidance, we decided to focus on an audience of high school students (aged 14-16), attending Tafford’s Virtual School (Manchester) for our first activity. These students had previously been in care and hence did not have the exposure to science that students of their age-group tend to have. This was a vulnerable group of students, so we took considerable care with the delivery of our presentation, ensuring that everything was easy to understand. We also prepared a risk assessment (insert link to pdf) for our interactive activity. The supervisor of the students (very kindly) allowed us to take pictures during the session!
Adhering to Elpida’s advice about tailoring our sessions to our audience, before starting the session, we wanted to gauge our audience’s level of understanding of synthetic biology. To do this we prepared a short survey and we found that less than 30% of our audience had ever heard of synthetic biology.
We delivered an interactive session to explain the basic principles of synthetic biology to these students. To do this, we borrowed some electrical circuit parts from UCL’s Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering and created a presentation, whilst ensuring that all graphics and text were appropriate for our target audience.
We used the concept of assembling electrical circuits to explain the assembly of synthetic biological circuits. We presented analogies between electrical components and synthetic biological parts. For example, cutting and stripping the wires became equivalent to preparing DNA for cloning, and coloured LEDs corresponded to fluorescent proteins, such as YFP, GFP and RFP.
The students really enjoyed our interactive session and we received valuable feedback from them that we used in our future presentations. Some of the staff got involved too!
To evaluate student engagement at the end of our session, we had prepared another survey. We found that at the end of the presentation, up to 55% of the students understood what synthetic biology was and two of them could even explain what it was to others!
After the event we went back to Elpida to evaluate the effectiveness of our public engagement activity, and we were told that the activity was very well planned and was very successful. Upon reflection, we realised that some of the students may have found the analogy, between the electrical circuits and the synthetic biological circuits, rather difficult to grasp, as many of these topics were very new to them. In the future therefore we would cater the content to be a little closer to the knowledge base the students would already have.
Following the success of the event, the Head of Department of Biochemical Engineering, Prof Gary J Lye, used the slide deck we created to deliver an outreach event at a secondary school in London. The full slides can be found below:
Synthetic Biology and the Senses:
In order to inform the public about the far-reaching applications of synthetic biology, we created an exhibition on synthetic biology, with the idea that the public would be able to engage with synthetic biology through their 5 senses. In order to collect samples for our exhibit we contacted artists and biodesigners around the world. We first practiced the exhibition at a UCL open day, and helped promote synthetic biology, iGEM, and biochemical engineering at UCL. We had 680 students register interest in engineering after the open day.
Touch
We collaborated with the sustainable biodesigner Aurelie Fontan, who kindly lent us her kombucha fabric, that she produced on her own. Kombucha is a drink made from a fermentation process using tea, sugar, a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, or "SCOBY". The same recipe is used to start growing fabric by creating a tea. Think of this microbial brew like a beehive but instead of thousands of bees building comb, there are millions of microscopic bacteria spinning and building cellulose fibres. These fibres grow to the size of the container. The result are wet mats of fibre that can be moulded, dyed and dried. Once dried, the texture ranges from a convincing leather-like material to a papyrus. Aurelie introduced us to other designers at Open Cell. Located in Shepherd’s Bush London, there are 45 shipping containers, with offices, workshops and biology labs for early stage startups and designers. Aurelie also invited us to a fashion show at Open Cell, called BioDesign Here Now. Here we brought out our best clothes, to prove that scientists don’t just wear lab coats! We also collected other samples here to present in our exhibition at New Scientist Live, including a mycelium bag (BIOHM) and bacterial-pigment dyed fabrics (Post Carbon Lab).
We collaborated with Bolt Threads and they kindly sent us a sample of a tie made out of Microsilk, which is synthetic spider silk produced in genetically engineered yeast. We also had a 3D model of our encapsulin targeted drug delivery mechanism, for viewers to get a more tangible approach to what were are actually trying to build.
Sound
Sounds clips recorded around our microbiology lab, contains sound clips of fumehoods and other hi-tech equipment. We also recorded a microwave that we use very often in our lab – people found this very surprising!
Smell
Algae are being used in the perfume industry as a sustainable and efficient way of producing concentrated scents. Dr Brenda Parker from the algal biology department at UCL has lent us some samples that she has been working on in her lab. Currently Dr Brenda Parker is working on cross-disciplinary project involving photosynthetic organisms, such as these algae, for the purpose of bioremediation, to address challenges relating to polluted land and water.
Sight
We used a light microscope to visualize cancer cells (specifically SKBR3 cell line which is the breast cancer cell lines that we are targeting), stem cells and T-cells. As some of these were live samples, they were very attractive to members of the general public, many of whom had never seen this type of microscope or these types of cells before!
Taste
Taste was challenging, as there are currently no GM crops sold for human consumption in the UK. However, algal dietary supplements, such as chlorella are currently sold in health food supermarkets, and have been suggested as potential genetic engineering targets for ketocarotenoid biosynthesis (1). Therefore we had an example of a currently sold chlorella supplement.
We pilot-tested our exhibition at the UCL Open Day, and were very pleased by the responses that we received! Many people had never heard of synthetic biology or biochemical engineering before, and hence were very interested in learning more about the science and the ways in which it could influence their lives! We particularly got a lot of positive feedback on our 3D encapsulin model (made of origami for the UCL Open Day). Following this positive feedback we invested in a durable 3D printed model for our exhibit at New Scientist Live.
New Scientist Live
After the initial success of our exhibition at the Open Day, we were extremely lucky to be invited by the Royal Academy of Engineering to share their stall at New Scientist Live in London. It is a popular science festival that happens every year from the 10th to the 13th October, with up to 40,000 guests, including people from all ages and backgrounds. To evaluate the impact of our exhibition, we also provided a check board for people to provide feedback.
Our team mate Rupali was also interviewed by the camera person for the Royal Academy of Engineering, watch the video below!
Scroll through the images below to see some photos of our New Scientist Live exhibit!
NEB Podcast
We collaborated with New England Biolabs Podcasts to create a podcast aimed at the general public. We interviewed a panel of experts in the field of synthetic biology and genetic engineering and asked them questions relating to misconceptions around synthetic biology.
The podcast was published on the 17th and it's available to listen to here!