Team:Bordeaux/Public Engagement

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Education & Engagement

Education

For the Education engagement, we have chosen to go to meet children for sensibilizing them to the beauty of Sciences. Hence, on a day of September we went to an Elementary school of Bordeaux to tell a class of eight years old children about DNA. It took place in an whole afternoon.

In the first period we did a little intervention at the board about what is biology and what is considered as « life ». They had trouble to consider microorganisms and plants as living organisms so the aim was to guide them and popularize the words so they could understand the concepts better. We also told them about organs, cells, DNA how they are linked and what makes them unique.

In a second time, we organized a little workshop to make doing a little experience with a DNA extraction of banana according to the following protocol:

  1. First, the banana was mashed (half of banana is enough) so we mechanically broke the cells
  2. Then we put one spoon of salt and three of detergent (washing-up liquid), so it dissolves the lipids and plasmic membrane
  3. In a third time, we put five spoons of water to make the DNA cells dissolved themselves
  4. Finally, we just filtered the mix, kept the filtrate and added a bit of methylated spirits. The two liquids would not mix and the DNA compacted itself and to become clearly visible.

The experiment worked well and the children were glad to do something and to see a result.

To conclude the session we chose to tell them about the DNA code. To do that we organized a color game where each color was corresponding to one amino acid base: red for A, blue for C, green for T, and yellow for G. They had to identify their eyes and hair color and to translate that into the DNA language Through all the afternoon we noticed that the children were very receptive to our intervention as they had a lot of questions.

They wanted to know everything about about science and they were curious about us and what we know. It was a really interesting experience for them and for us. The teachers were also very happy about the afternoon and they invited us to come again any time!

Survey

Part of our Human Practice work, we have established a little survey under the form of a mini quiz. It aims to establish a state of knowledge regarding what people know about forest in general, and the resulting industry. We diffused the survey to all IGEM teams contacted by social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. As the objective was not to collect only igemers participation, we diffused the survey among our university classmates, friends and family. The survey was available under both English and French version. In that way we hoped to reach a maximum of people to establish a great overview of the results.

Survey structure

The quiz has 8 questions with 3 answers and only one is correct. At the end of these questions the participant must fill personal information fields in order to see who is participating. We asked for the age group, the country of residency and if the player is participating to the current IGEM competition or not. After sending his answers the player is assigned a mark on 8pts and he can consult a correction.

Questions theme

All questions refer to the concept of Forest in general and worldwide. Some were more oriented to how the forest are used, and how they are managed. They are listed below:

  1. Approximately how much of the total forest represents the modified natural forests worldwide ?
  2. Which country has the largest forested area ?
  3. Which country generates the most industrial profit from its forests ?
  4. What type of forest is the most represented in the world ?
  5. How many people are employed in the forest trades ?
  6. In Brazil, which activity is the most responsible in the reduction of forests ?
  7. Which country is the leader in pulp and paper industry ?
  8. Today, how are recycled sub-products from wood industry ?

Results

We collected a total of 127 answers. From these 127 participants, 60 are participating to the IGEM competition which represents 47.2%. The average mark is 2.33/8. The proportion of correct answers is visible on the histogram.

The low average mark score is indicating a lake of knowledge in most of the questions. However, it is not surprising to see such a fact as some of the questions were very specific. We can see that half of the answers from question 4 are correct. At the opposite, only 15.2% of the answers from question 6 are correct. The little score for the question 6 highlights a weakness concerning the main reason of the destruction of the biggest forest in the world; the Amazonian forest. It is surprising as we know since years now that the Amazon Rainforest is being hurt and reduced in superficies every year.

The age repartition of the participants is also significative with 80% of 18-25 years old range. This is not surprising as we, in the team, are all from this age and diffused the survey to our friends and colleagues.

What is interesting for us is the result obtained for the final question. Only 30.4% of the answers are correct. Most of the participants do not know how are recycled sub-products from the wood industry. The correct answer is that sub-products from the wood industry are burnt to produce thermal energy. However, the answers indicate that most of them think these sub-products are not recycled at all.

Regarding our project it is interesting to see that people are not aware of how forests are managed. Hence, a large work of awareness, information and documentation needs to be done so people know the potential of forest to maximize the benefits they already give us.

Thanks to the personal information field, it is interesting to see from where all the participants come from. Most of them are from France. However, we collected answers from other European countries such as Germany, England Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. We also reached farer countries such as Canada, USA, Algeria, but even India and Japan.

Interviews

In the context of our project, we wondered about the impact of the competition and the opinion people working at the university may have. We therefore asked three people about their opinion: a researcher, a teacher doing educational research and our IP. They gave us their point of view on iGEM, on what it brings to a scientist, a teacher and also to students.

Denis Dupuy

His website

Denis Dupuy did his graduate work in human genetics and molecular biology in the Gene Therapy and Molecular Pathology lab under the supervision of Prof. B. Arveiler at the University of Bordeaux, France. His project focused on the positional cloning of a susceptibility gene for schizophrenia in the vicinity of the breakpoint of a chromosomal translocation associated with the disease. In the course of this work, he benefited directly from the then ongoing efforts of the Human Genome Project, which made him realize the importance of systematic approaches both as a complement to and a resource for reductionist approaches. After receiving his doctoral degree, he joined Marc Vidal’s lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA) for post-doctoral training. In the Vidal lab, he developed the technological tools and strategies needed for the systematic mapping of in vivo promoter activity in C. elegans. In September 2007, Denis Dupuy joined the European Institute of Chemistry and Biology in Bordeaux, France as a group leader to pursue the characterization of C. elegans gene regulation programs.

Axel Innis

His website

Axel did his PhD in structural biology at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Prof. Tom Blundell (1998-2002). He then joined the group of Dr. R. Sowdhamini at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore as a visiting fellow (2002-2004), where he developed a computational method for identifying functionally important sites in proteins. Following his time in India, Axel joined the laboratory of Prof. Thomas Steitz at Yale University (2004-2012). There, he chose to tackle what was, at the time, a little-known form of translational control: the regulation of ribosomal protein synthesis by the nascent polypeptide. He joined IECB as a group leader in January 2013, was awarded the 2017 Coups d’Elan Prize for French Research from the Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation and was selected as a 2017 EMBO Young Investigator. We interviewed him because he took a particular interest in our project during our experimentation phase at the IECB.

Ijsbrand Kramer

From a pedagogical point of view iGEM makes some very important contributions:

  1. It is an authentic research experience, meaning it is based on a real question, students design and perform their own experiments, they interpret their results, they draw conclusions, it is open ended (they do not work for a defined outcome), and importantly, their findings may have some societal impact. These features drive students towards a mastery orientation, a goal orientation associated with deep learning (a,d,f).
  2. As a consequence, the project is motivating because it offers students a sense of autonomy, meaning that they have a high level of control of what they are doing, they iGEM offers a great sense of agency. Because of societal relevance and because of participation in a jamboree in Boston, this kind of project boosts a sense of competence. The students feel useful; they realize that education is not just to please the teacher with a good grade. And finally, because of an authentic experience and because of a team- based activity, students have a great sense of relatedness, related to each other, their supervisors and related to the discipline they have been studying for so long (d,f).
  3. The beauty of iGEM is that it offers unique occasions for educational institutions to communicate their pedagogical activities. As for scientific discoveries, universities must communicate about education, not just publishing lists of course subjects to attract students. They must make education visible, tangible and they must make it important.
  4. Lastly, many studies have shown that iGEM-type of experiences connects students tightly with the educational institute and this connection creates long lasting positive sentiments (b,c). Not only do positive sentiments or, better, the lack of stress from frustration, stimulate the plasticity of our brain (e), which makes the students more creative and productive, these sentiments also positively affect the educational institution concerned. Besides an institutional salary, engaging and masterly-oriented students are a key (motivational) reward for teachers who take their mission seriously.
Literature:
  1. Ames C. classrooms: goals, structures and student motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology 1992;84(3):261-271
  2. Astin AW. What matters in college. Liberal Education 1993;79(4):4-12.
  3. Howard-smith J, Bryant FB, Njus D, Posavac EJ. Here today, gone tomorrow: understanding freshman attrition using person-environment fit theory. Optimal Data Analysis 2010;1:1010-124
  4. Kramer IM, Kusurkar. Science-writing in the blogosphere as a tool to promote autonomous motivation in Education. The Internet and higher education 2017;35:48-62.
  5. Lledo PM, Alonso M, Grubb MS. Adult neurogenesis and functional plasticity in neuronal circuits. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2006;7:179-193
  6. Ryan RM, Deci EL. Self-Determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development and well being. American Psychologist 2000;55(1):68-78.

Conferences and Debates

The 29th May, 2018, we organized a series of talks on the theme of ethics in science and potential misuse of biological research. These talks were open to public but we focused on biological student in order to increase awareness for future researchers and engineers.

The first speech was given by Mr. Marc Mainguené in the name of the foundation Anthony Mainguené who aim to arise ethical consciousness in the society and promote new ethical behavior especially in management. Mr. Mainguené gave us philosophical definition of ethic and an overview of development axis in order to promote ethical way to lead project by forecasting impact on society and integrate project among stakeholder. See more at http://www.fondation-anthonymainguene.org/


The second talk was given by Mr. Patrice Binder, expert in biosecurity specialized in the issue of dual use of biotechnologies and biological weapons proliferation. During his talk Mr Binder gave us specific and detailed case of misuse of biological research for biological weapon production. This speech allowed us to better understand potential risks associated with any synthetic biology project.


All thoses talks, along with the discussion that we had with each of them, allowed us to understand the stakes that comes with the creation of any synthetic biology project like iGEM. It was very interesting to hear many differents perspective and we hope this knowledge about ethics will help us to lead our projects better in the future and maybe to be some slightly better scientists.