Team:Tec-Chihuahua/Public Engagement
Overview
iGEM Tec-Chihuahua believes that regardless of the results we get and the goals we complete if we do not share this information, it could be considered as never done. The essential goal we had in the developing of our Education and Public Engagement area was getting more people involved in some way or another to science. However, there are some previous steps we considered critical to do before explaining our project to other people. For this reason, we found necessary to give people an introduction to what is Synthetic Biology.
We identified the four fundamental questions that we think every team who wishes to do a great Education and Public Engagement section should abide by. Here we share this questions:
Which organizations are related to my topic? Identify the organizations or institutions linked to your project.
In those organizations, with whom can we get close to have the first approach? Contact the right person related to the area you are looking for and have a better two-way dialog.
By taking this first approach, how can they help us reach the society? Tell him/her what you want to do to enhance society's way of thinking. Don't forget to establish your storyboard and your limits, remember that something concise and well developed is much better than vague and incomplete tasks.
What are we going to do to make this changes happen? Set your working model and prepare everything with enough time. Remind to get to people's thoughts as well as people's hearts.
These four questions worked very well for our team and we share them with the objective of helping others develop their Education and Public Engagement section. Having said this, we share in the following 12 buttons below how we applied and adapted this four questions throughout the past months.
Conclusion
By performing these activities, we aspired to relate to people to not only understand what they taught about synthetic biology but also to know how they felt about it. Our objective denoted to enhance the community, then Mexico and later other countries through activities that involved new societies into this newly emerging field.
For our surprise, we achieved even more than that. We expected to teach and receive feedback on this science branch, but what did surprise us were the great bonds we built with beekeepers, youth and the public in general.
Everyone involved in our Education and Public Engagement section was in the right place at the right moment, which drove us to explore different opportunities. These new opportunities allowed us to correlate our brains with their brains as well as our hearts with their hearts.
We are very happy to have accomplished our goal after developing these 12 projects, but the best of all is we managed to impact so many people with synthetic biology. We saw how curiosity defeated shyness over the public and we are sure it will continue growing in the same way on the future.
High School Introductory Topics
When we are freshman students, we want to involve ourselves in every activity or take any opportunity our career has to offer us. That’s why there is no better audience that people who are enthusiastic at the beginning of their adult life.
For this reason, our college has a week full of activities for all high school alumni with the objective of helping them find out if he or she likes the career they have chosen or not. In our case, we were able to help in a week full of biotechnology engineering activities and welcome students into undergraduate projects. Introductory topics week was from February 26th to March 2nd.
This was our very first Education and Public Engagement activity. There were around 30 high school students who made activities such as molecular gastronomy, a mouse dissection, nitrogen ice cream, oocyte extraction, electrophoresis, between others.
At the end of this week, we wanted to help them see how they can apply what they had done during the week in a real project. Therefore, we presented these alumni synthetic biology for the first time. Since we knew that for several students this week was their first approach to biotechnology, we explained what
was synthetic biology and how this new emerging tool can be used to help current worldwide issues. As well, we had the chance to answer some questions that emerged in some students related to this new technology.
To end our presentation, we invited them to attend to our grill for raising funds so we could be able to start with our wet lab.
Meeting with Beekeepers
“Feedback between researcher and producer is very important because, this way, we can collaborate more effectively, ensuring a two-way communication.”
These were the words beekeepers from our community told us when we presented them our first bee project proposal in one of their monthly meetings. Here was when we started looking for external support and found great results. We found out that these meetings take place every first Saturday of the month in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, Mexico, where beekeepers discuss and plan activities in benefit of bees.
We looked and spoke to the president of the Beekeepers Society in Cuauhtémoc looking for his approval and feedback about the project. He was very gentle and invited us
to one of their beekeeper’s meetings for us to get closer with the community directly related to bees.
We attended this meeting on May 5th of 2018 where 32 beekeepers gave us a space to present them our project proposal.
“Almost no beekeeper is related to science, they said, they only buy products against bee pathogens that they hear are great for their beehives.”
Thanks to this, we strongly believe that the knowledge we have acquired along these months working with synthetic biology doesn't deserve to stay with us in the lab. For this reason, more people need to know that science has improved, creating innovative and less risking solutions to agricultural issues and biodiversity in general. Thanks to this comment we decided to work hard for Education and Public Engagement, we wanted to get to people’s hearts so they could create their own point of view for these situations.
Was here when we explained to them what synthetic biology involved and how we were working with it to aid the beekeeping field.
We could identify one of their greatest fears in the beekeeping business, but the question is, fear of what? Simple, they are afraid that their honey is rejected by European countries when they export it due to the use of GMOs since they are an essential Mexican honey buyer.
Here we could learn and detect one of the most important problems in beekeeping and got more convinced that proposing a scientific solution to this problems could help them broaden their horizons. We needed to make sure that they understood how synthetic biology worked without needing to leave GMOs in the resulting honey, which we did. This task was done by preparing beekeepers a simple presentation with terms that were comprehensible for them, where we explained some examples of how it has been used in the last few years.
After this, we presented our first research project proposal and they told us some feedback that we used later to integrate and improve it. They congratulated us for making research projects in beekeeping because it is being forgotten, and if we can do something in benefit of bees, we are totally welcomed to this business.
IV State’s Beekeeping Forum
In our state, 250 honey producers are distributed in 10 regional associations. We count with more than 43,000 beehives. We produce approximately 600 tons of honey per year, of which 400 are exported mainly to Germany and the rest stays for local consume.1
We live in a state where beekeepers must be informed of what is happening in the outside world. Having said that, we think that they should know how synthetic biology can influence their business with our given approach. For us, it's very important to keep in touch with the people who are directly related to bees. Therefore, we went ahead with the task of making a bigger step and getting more informed citizens and more conscious beekeepers.
After our meeting with beekeepers in Cuauhtémoc, we noticed that beekeepers needed to stay updated with
science and that besides reaching our locality, we wanted to embrace our state.
That’s why we participated in the “IV Foro Estatal de Apicultura” (4th State’s Beekeeping Forum in English), to discuss what is behind synthetic biology and to let people who are not related with the laboratory know that this new area of genetic engineering is not that far away.
This event took place from July 27th through July 29th in our state in the city of Delicias, a couple of hours away from our home. The “IV Foro Estatal de Apicultura” was organized by the Delicias' Beekeepers Association and the State's Government, which counted with the presence of state and federal authorities.
The Delicias' Beekeepers Association invited beekeepers from Chihuahua’s state, future beekeepers, the delegate of the Secretariat of State in charge of administering federal funds to rural development, general public that was interested in bees, and the iGEM team Tec-Chihuahua 2018.
Here we had the opportunity to introduce for the first time synthetic biology to regional beekeepers and important members of government associations. We made two posters to explain attendees this science branch, from which a lot of people got interested and got close to try to learn more about it. Here we show the two posters we made, the one which explained what is synthetic biology and the other where we explained our project, this in order to give an example of how we have used this technology.
We discovered we woke up people's curiosity and decided to open their panorama by giving an example of synthetic biology application in bees, so we presented our project. Thanks to this, everyone could find out about this new science approach by asking us questions, so they could give us their feedback after our presentation.
The public shared their opinions and their concerns about synthetic biology, but more than that, we solved people’s confusions and established conversation to spark new minds into synthetic biology.
“With synthetic biology, are you going to genetically modify the bees or the larvae?”
This was the question that was asked the most. We noticed that beekeepers were really concerned about this method, which gave us a chance to explain detail by detail the difference between genetic engineering and synthetic biology.
We were able to impact positively more than 300 hundred people including beekeepers, concerned citizens, and respected government authorities. Also, we could inspire beekeepers to try biotechnological products on their apiaries after getting well informed on how they would work in their beehives.
We know not everything stays in the lab or just in words for theoretical explanations, that's why we decided to make some field work. On the last day of the forum, beekeepers invited us to attend to different local apiaries, where we learned everything bees had to teach us and received great knowledge every beekeeper shared with us.
References
- Sonoran Business. (2013). APICULTURA Exporta unas 18 mil abejas cada año. 20 de junio de 2018, de Sonoran Business Sensor Pulso Económico del Noroeste. Sitio web: http://www.sonoranbusinesssensor.com/2013/03/apicultura-exporta-chihuahua-unas-18.htm
Science Clubs Mexico 2018
After seeing that we had made a great job with beekeepers thanks to our past activities, we remembered something they told us in the very beginning; “beekeeping needs scientific research from young minds.” With this in mind, we found out about Clubes de Ciencia México 2018 (Science Clubs Mexico 2018)
Clubes de Ciencia México (CdeCMx) is a non-profit organization that seeks to encourage Mexican students to pursue professional opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math. This initiative was firstly introduced at Harvard with the objective to create relationships between students and important researchers, besides spreading science to young people. Thanks to this, CdeCMx has designed an education model for these areas called Clubs. These Clubs target high school and undergraduate students with the objective of making them learn theoretical and practical aspects of these topics.
Each Club is developed by a team of young scientists from the most prestigious universities and research institutions in Mexico and the United States. Each summer, the organization carries out the week of CdeCMx in several cities in the country with the partnership of multiple institutions.
One of the best things this organization has to offer is that every Club is free thus everyone who is interested in science has the opportunity to attend.
This is a project that involves 9 different headquarters in Mexico. It has over 162 Clubs, 300 instructors and 2200 students within the country. In Chihuahua, our university, the “Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus Chihuahua” was one of the 9 headquarters in Mexico for this important event.
Our campus hosted 120 undergraduate students from different institutions along the city who were advised by 12 professors that shared their knowledge and applied it to theoretical and practical lessons. 6 Clubs took place in our campus throughout the week and counted with instructors from different institutions. There were instructors from Tec de Monterrey
Campus Monterrey, MIT, University of Kentucky, Duke University, CIMAV (Center for Research in Advanced Materials), University of Chicago, UACH (Autonomous University of Chihuahua), University of Texas, University of Baja California, University of San Diego, Harvard, among others.
For iGEM Tec Chihuahua 2018 is very important to wake up interests for science in students, so it spreads a little more every time. That's why we decided to support one of the Clubs given at our campus which was “El mundo real de la biotecnología” (The real world of biotechnology in English).
This Club taught students the key concepts in molecular biology and practical lab activities to use living organisms, such as bacteria, to modify a product or process for a specific use. The activities given in the Club were microbiology, prokaryotic cellular cultures, bacterial transformation, DNA purification, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and electrophoresis techniques.
We had the opportunity to help researchers and staff of the Club by preparing everything the students were going to need to make the scheduled activities mentioned above. We provided them with lab materials such as Petri dishes, culture media, competent cells, and GFP and RFP vectors so they could proceed with the activities.
On the last day, there was a space scheduled in the closure of the event called “Programs for an approach to science in Mexico”. Throughout the week we related to Oscar Pineda-Catalan and Sonia Hernández, both instructors from the University of Chicago. They showed interest in our team and were amazed by the social impact we had been making with beekeepers. For this reason, we were invited to talk to students in the closure of the Club “Material Science: it looks like magic, but is real”.
In this Club, we presented who we were, what we were working on, and how synthetic biology has led us to contribute something to the beekeeping field. For us, this was a great opportunity because we wanted to wake up youth's curiosity by introducing them to the synthetic biology field and also inspire them to participate in programs that offer an approach to science in Mexico.
iGEM as LIFE
At this point of our Education and Public Engagement section, we have already done activities that involved beekeepers and people completely unrelated to science. In this case, we wanted to have a different approach to include people of different ages. We discovered that adults and beekeepers had a great response
to technologies and that they were open-minded to learn new things. For this reason, we wanted to try this teaching method in a distinct sector. We wanted to reach the learning community which led us to get close to it by looking for ways to get involved with young people. After establishing our plan on how we could achieve this, we found the LiFE department at our university and asked for information about it.
LiFE (Liderazgo y Formación Estudiantil in Spanish) symbolizes Leadership and Student Training. It is a new education model for the student life in Tecnológico de Monterrey. The program provides us, as alumni, a comprehensive education that
enhances our personal capabilities, leadership, and self-realization, considering our physical, emotional and spiritual balance.
Knowing this, iGEM Tec Chihuahua decided to be part of LiFE and we registered the team as part of it. We got informed of what we needed to make our team a student group that belonged to LiFE and joined right away. LiFE encourages student groups to involve themselves with people who may be interested in their desired topic by making activities that result interesting to the audience, which was perfect for the approach we were looking for.
We attach below the official picture of iGEM at Tecnológico de Monterrey as part of LiFE.
The approach we gave to the group was synthetic biology. Our main objective is to attend to different schools where synthetic biology is not conferred and teach alumni what we have learned about this new technology throughout these months. We seek to communicate our acquired knowledge, express ideas and share information in order to light up interest in science on high school students.
So far we have gone to the UVM (University of the Mexican Valley) and gave high school students an introduction of what synthetic biology means and some concepts we considered meaningful to teach. For this first visit, we contacted Dr. Sonia Chavira Ríos, who is a teacher at this school. We explained what we wanted to present to her 11th-grade students and she accepted. She found our topic enlightening for her science class and gave iGEM Tec-Chihuahua a space to present. We went to UVM High School on September 18th where we talked about DNA, base pairs that shape DNA, genes, plasmids, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and recombinant DNA.
As well, we had the opportunity to ground all the theoretical information by talking about how we applied synthetic biology and genetic engineering to our iGEM project. We explained to them how we made our bacterial transformation and how we obtain the protein production. As well, we wanted to keep in touch with them in case of any doubts they could have so we annexed our contact to keep communication.
Below you can find the presentation we showed them:
By attending this class, besides teaching, we also learned a few things. We detected that several students were interested in science. High schools manage these topics in a simple way in order to invite the student to look more about it. The problem is that not every student knows where to get close to receive more information. Analyzing this situation, we decided to keep attending high schools with the same approach throughout the semester. We want to spread science a little more with every visit, maybe one day one of these students is the one teaching us the new opportunities synthetic biology is creating for humanity.
MEXMUN
After receiving a great response from high school students, we felt very satisfied to share moments with young people and decided to do another activity that involved youth. We looked a way to reach alumni from different parts of Mexico and we found MEXMUN, a Mexican Model of the United Nations.
Model of the United Nations (MUN) can be defined as the simulation and representation of the United Nations System in which junior high school, high school, and college students participate as one country in a committee and discuss topics of interest for this international agency.
In Mexico, the MUN that involves students from different educational institutions at a different educational level is called Mexico Model of the United Nations (MEXMUN). Here, students from all over the Mexican Republic attend to
represent a country in a specific committee as a delegate. Delegates chose a country and prepare themselves to be the debate and discuss proposals with real information of that given country.
In MEXMUN 2017, this event hosted 663 delegates, 35 schools and 16 committees in Spanish, English, and French, making this event the country's largest model. For us, spreading knowledge is one of our main goals. We want to make people think out of the box and imagine scenarios where synthetic biology can aim to environmental alternatives and solve serious humanity problems but we also know that if it isn’t used correctly, things can go out of control and make everything go wrong.
For this MUN we wanted to approach students and help them see how synthetic biology can be used or misused. Our objective with this topic is that students search for information on how every country is dealing with this new emerging technology in order to keep youth updated.
That's why we emailed Arturo Martínez, General Secretary of MEXMUN 2018, and asked him a space for iGEM Tec-Chihuahua in this year’s edition. We explained to them what we wanted to do, how we wanted to collaborate, and our approach to synthetic biology. The team liked the idea and accepted us in MEXMUN 2018, which is going to take place in Mexico City, the capital of our country, on October 26th and 27th.
There are 12 committees in this edition that are going to be performed by junior high and high school students from all over the Mexican Republic. These students registered themselves in the committee they liked the most, they reviewed their committee’s handbook in order to investigate how their country relates to the given topic, write their official position as delegates, and discuss their information and proposals at the day of the event.
We collaborated in the First Committee on Disarmament and International Security (CDSI in Spanish) by developing Topic A: “Synthetic biology as a tool for the development of biological weapons.”
In order to develop the topic, we wrote an essay about how synthetic biology has been used to create organisms able to cause damage to humanity when misused, antecedents of how institutions (such as the United Nations) have developed protocols to regulate the misusage of this new technology, actual situations that involve synthetic biology, facts about the storage of dangerous biological samples, facts about dangerous laboratories around the world, and biohackers.
As well, we attached what we expected from delegates during the event. These points are:
- The position of the country they have chosen to the use, development, storage or acquisition of genetically modified organisms as biological weapons.
- Measures carried out by the country to abolish the creation of genetically modified organisms as biological weapons.
- Actions carried out by the country to prevent the development of genetically modified organisms as biological weapons.
- Proposals to suppress the development of biological weapons through synthetic biology.
- Organisms that could help victims and how would they contribute.
- Limits that should be established in the use of synthetic biology according to the country.
In order to grade delegates, we wrote aspects/issues that should be solved during the debate. These aspects are:
- Countries must assess the new risks that arise every day about synthetic biology.
- Countries must enforce the ban on genetically modified organisms as biological weapons.
- Reach a resolution regarding the storage of dangerous biological samples.
- Regulate access to genetic material and laboratory instrumental for their use on not authorized spaces by non-certified individuals (this can be via the Internet or through illegal means) since it could provide a broader framework for the storage of biological or toxin weapons.
- Action plan against biohackers.
- Action plan to control the spread of synthetic biology and its accessibility for the future.
Here we attach a picture of MEXMUN’s web page, where we appear as developers of Topic A of the First Committee on Disarmament and International Security.
Our objective, besides making diffusion of synthetic biology, is to give future iGEM teams something they can build upon. That’s why we decided to write the steps we used on how to develop a Topic for a Model of the United Nations in case that someone in the future wants to organize one and doesn't know how to start.
Below we share a PDF of the guide we wanted to give to future iGEMers with the points we covered to develop Topic A. Here we mention what to include on each point and how to adapt it to any Topic you decide to discuss.
For this case, we share as an example the PDF of Topic A that iGEM Tec-Chihuahua 2018 wrote for this year’s event. MEXMUN and our team used this PDF to help mentor delegates so they can understand what synthetic biology is and how it is related to biological weapons. This document can be also found on MEXMUN’s official website. Below we annex both versions, the original version in Spanish and the translation in English. It is worth mentioning that after the event took place, CDSI was the only committee which presented the two solutions for both of the topics discussed. As well, MEXMUN counted with the honorable presence of the Hungarian Ambassador to Mexico, Ivan Medveczky, who told students the actual topics that are treated nowadays in the UN and the topics that will be treated in the upcoming years.
Bee Culture Magazine
iGEM Tec Chihuahua has proposed a solution to a real beekeeping problem using synthetic biology, but we also know that not everyone can understand how it works without knowing previously what this new science branch involves. Having said that, it is very important for us to let people know about synthetic biology and the benefits that it could bring to Apis mellifera and to life in general.
For our Human Practices, we want to raise awareness for bees and how we can help these remarkable organisms to fight for their lives. For this reason, we looked for this prestigious beekeeping magazine to make diffusion of synthetic biology in more countries.
Bee Culture is a very important magazine, in the United States and other English-speaking countries, that shares useful articles for beekeepers and people interested in bees. It is the American beekeeping magazine which has news and expert tips for beginning, sideline, and commercial beekeepers. The scope of the magazine is given by the monthly subscriptions, which are available to all English-speaking countries and people who are interested in this topic all around the world. The magazine could be found in a printed edition, smartphones, tablets, and web edition.
That’s why we decided to write an article and share it with the ones who are interested in this sector. We want that people know that there also exists a new way to redesign biological systems which could be channeled in favor of any living organism besides the traditional antibiotics and treatments.
We firmly believe that synthetic biology needs to be spread, but not only in our community. We wanted to reach people strictly related with this field, so we wrote to the Bee Culture Magazine an article proposal, which they liked and will be published in November’s magazine edition.
The article’s title is “Synthetic Biology: An Advantageous Approach to Combat Bee Diseases” where we talked about what is synthetic biology and how it has been used in the beekeeping sector in the last few years. We also wrote about the colony collapse disorder, which is the phenomenon that is affecting many beekeepers nowadays. This disorder is making beehives susceptible to many diseases, such as American and European Foulbrood. As well, we mentioned that synthetic biology is creating technology to help solve this diseases without altering the natural genomic of the bee or the resulting honey. As well, we finished the article saying that we wanted to create knowledge and well-informed citizens who can create their own point of view to this technology, based on good information.
Besides the article, we know that synthetic biology is a completely new topic for beekeepers, nevertheless we think that science should be part of everyone’s lives. That's why we put our contact at the end of the article, so iGEM Tec-Chihuahua 2018 could solve questions that could emerge in beekeepers or public in general.
Since our article will be published after the Giant Jamboree takes place, we asked Bee Culture’s editor, Kim Flottum, to write us an email ensuring our article in next’s edition. Below you can find the email Bee Culture’s editor wrote for us. To see more of this article, it will be found on the Bee Culture November’s magazine edition!
Genetic Manipulation Forum
Every year a new Student Council (SAIBT) is elected by all the alumni and we decided to join forces and plan something at our college. For this edition, iGEM Tec-Chihuahua and this student community came up together to organize a forum in which synthetic biology, as well as other related topics such as genetic engineering, are discussed and shared with the public in general. iGEM Team Tec-Chihuahua 2018 is organizing this forum in collaboration with the council and the Biotechnology Degree directives to reach a greater public and cover a bigger community sector.
The plan for this forum consists of 4 vital steps; brainstorming, planning, promotion, and fulfillment. Please click on each drawing to see what we did for each step.
Brainstorming, which was a crucial step in order to make the achievement of the event possible. Here we had the opportunity to schedule some appointments with the Biotechnology Engineering Student Council and gave ideas that could be useful for the forum. We wanted to host an event that catches people's attention, that's why we opened the outlook to genetic manipulation, so people interested in this topic could receive knowledge from several areas and fields.
Planning in which dates, places, fundraising activities, and special guests were defined. We shared ideas, communicated initiatives and started planning the official program schedule. This schedule consists of the following:
Registry: all our guests register themselves and a bracelet will be given to make logistics easier.
Opening: our Biotechnology Degree directives and the Campus Director will address some words to the public to officially inaugurate the event.
Conference 1: to begin with the forum, we invited Ph.D. Gerardo Pavel Espino Solis, a professor at the Autonomous University of Chihuahua on the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Ph.D. Espino Solis has published several articles as well as having a patent on the production of antibodies that modulate the immune response at different levels in chickens.
Break
Biotalks: we want to show people how science is used by successful undergraduate students.
In our campus, we have some friends that went to Mitacs for a summer and made great investigation projects. Mitacs is a national, not-for-profit organization that has designed and delivered research programs in Canada for 19 years. Here, students spend 12 weeks of their summer working with a Ph.D. in the lab helping them develop a project. We want to give a space for 4 students from our college that attended to Mitcas to present what they did and how they achieved their goals on 12 weeks.
As well, we wanted to include projects from other universities, therefore, we looked for 2 students from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua that had great projects related to Biotechnology Engineering.
The objective with these biotalks is that each participant presents their work in order to inspire the community to approach to science.
iGEM Presentation: here, we will be able to talk about synthetic biology and how we used it to get to our final project proposal. We want people to discover new things and that they understand what is behind this new technology.
Lunchtime: we invite the meal, Tec-Chihuahua and SAIBT cooperated and we will be giving free tacos for our attendees.
Conference 2: for our second conference, we decided to bring the Ph.D. Gerardo Armando Aguado Santacruz, biofertilizer expert from Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico that has plenty of experience working with genetic manipulation. Some of the skills and expertise he has are cell culture, environment, plant physiology, soil fertility, crop production, plant molecular biology, among many others.
Closure: we will thank everyone that was present in our event and we will make the invitation to the networking area in order to create relationships between experts and alumni.
Networking: our objective is that people share knowledge, make comments about science and about everything they would have learned throughout the day. We want to create opportunities for students and bidirectional communication as well as connections with our special guests, increased confidence, respect, and excellence.
Promotion of the forum by the development of the Official Announcement, as well as a first look at the propaganda that was shared on our social media. Here we attach the flyer we made to invite people to our forum!
Fulfillment of the event, where we carry out months of planning and see results. For a matter of time and logistics at our university, the 4th step is forthcoming. The forum will be hosted at Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Chihuahua, our university in 2019 and we expect an outreach of 100 attendees.
Forum's Objective
What we are looking to receive with this event is to invite people to get interested in topics such as synthetic biology and to wake up their curiosity for science. To achieve this, we planned this forum with the objective of creating competencies in our attendees and to observe how synthetic biology lights up future scientists' hearts.
ERA for GMOs
Science evolves every day without even noticing it, so there has to be laws and protocols that regulate what new technologies do. After participating in the developing of Topic A in MEXMUN 2018, we got concerned about what synthetic biology could do without regulation. With this in mind, we decided to get informed about biosafety and how access to technologies is pertinent to the sustainable use of biological diversity.
When we were planning activities for our Education and Public Engagement and Integrated Human Practices, we searched for past iGEM members in order to receive mentoring. To achieve this, we scheduled a reunion with Saúl F. Pizarro Medina, member
of iGEM Team Tec-Chihuahua 2015. We explained him the project and what we were planning for our Human Practices.
Saúl is a committed student who involves himself in several activities related to biotechnology. At that moment, he was working, along with other students, to collaborate with biotechnology experts. These prestigious experts were developing an Environmental Risk Assessment Guide for Genetically Modified Organisms (ERA for GMOs).
We found this a great opportunity to get informed about biosafety and how an evaluation should be done in order to commercialize a biotechnological product without violating established standards. Saúl commented to his mentor, Ph.D. María Mercedes Roca, that we wanted to participate in this collaboration and she invited us to cooperate to their work.
The ERA for GMOs is a completely independent project written by biotechnology experts being Ph.D. María Mercedes Roca, Ph.D. Paulo Paes de Andrade, Ph.D. Wayne Parrott, and MSc. Robert McDowell the principal editors of this second edition.
This initiative began due to Article 15 on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention on Biological Diversity entered into force on December 29th, 1993 and nowadays its the most important international instrument for addressing biodiversity issues by providing a comprehensive approach to the conservation of biological diversity. One of the issues that the Convention addresses is biosafety. Article 15 states that risk assessments should be carried out in a scientifically sound manner and mentions its specifications in Annex III on this Protocol. According to the Annex III:
- Objective of making a Risk Assessment
Identify and evaluate how likely is a GMO able to have adverse effects on the conservation of biological diversity and human health.
- Use of Risk Assessment
The risk assessment (RA) is used by authorities to make informed decisions about living modified organisms.
- General principles
RA should be transparent and can take advice from relevant international organizations. Every case is different, therefore the RA should be done on a case-by-case basis.
- Methodology
Identification of any genotypic and phenotypic characteristics related to the GMO that may have adverse effects on biological diversity and/or human’s health.
Evaluation of the probability of the adverse effects the GMO could provoke.
Evaluation of the consequences of the adverse effects the GMO could provoke.
Estimation of the overall risk that GMO would have based on the probability and consequences of the adverse effects.
Recommendation as to whether the risks are acceptable or manageable.
If they are manageable, identification of strategies to manage those risks.
Requesting further information if there is uncertainty or implementing appropriate risk management strategies, as well as monitoring the GMO in the environment.
It is important to take into account scientific information of the parental organisms, organisms, characteristics of the vector, genetic characteristics of the inserted DNA and/or characteristics of the modification introduced, detection of the GMO, information of the intended use of that GMO and information of the receiving environment.
Based on Annex III of Article 15 on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the editors wrote the second edition of the Environmental Risk Assessment Guide and iGEM Tec-Chihuahua was able to help with the English-Spanish translation. We wanted to help with this project due to the importance of regulating science.
Instead of us writing a RA guide, we considered this opportunity a great time to learn from experts and reflect on the requirements needed to launch a biotechnology product in the market. Is worth mentioning that, Education and Public Engagement permitted us not only to do the translation of this guide and provide educative material to society but also integrate our product AMPABEE and establish our legal plan.
Another reason why we wanted to do this collaboration was that, rather than disseminating synthetic biology, we wanted to enhance society with something useful. Many people have the uncertainty that GMOs will cause more damage than the benefit
that could be obtained from them, but with this, we were able to contribute to Spanish-speaking people that there is a process behind the release of a biotechnological product to the environment.
We are very honored to have been able to leave our contribution to a guide that will be used by all those companies derived from modern biotechnology who wish to create a product and thus solve an abundant problem in the community.
This guide will be discussed and shared in the United Nations Biodiversity Conference on a side event of the 9th meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COPMOP9) in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt on November 17th, 2018. Below, you can find the participation certificate María Mercedes Roca, Ph.D. signed to validate the team's collaboration!
References
- Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2000). Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity: text and annexes. Montreal: Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Youth Biotech
With iGEM and every activity we have made, we learned that science is much more than just wet lab work. We passionated with giving society a piece of what we have learned through all these months by making people engaged with new technologies. We firmly believe that committed and grateful students should share what they know with their community. Therefore, we looked to make a further step. Our objective is to leave a mark and that people remember the bee team.
With this philosophy in mind and at the same time we were translating the ERA guide, we were given the possibility to join Youth Biotech. Youth Biotech (YB) is a group of biotechnology students who seek to disseminate science and all areas of biotechnology, including synthetic biology.
Some of the activities YB does are events, congresses, and diffusion of science in general with the help of outstanding instructors from different institutions related to biotechnology and science.
There are biotechnology engineers from several countries of the world that belong to YB, for example, Mexico, United States, Philippines, Russia, Germany, Egypt, United Kingdom, among others.
As an undergraduate student, being part of YB has several privileges. These privileges are possible due to the outstanding student community that is part of this group. YB also allows members to meet people, share knowledge between students from other countries, join different organizations, plan events to involve the community, attend to events all around the world, between others. As well, this group is going to be made a civil organization in Sinaloa, Mexico so it could be an official national group.
We were amazed at all the benefits we could acquire and everything we could learn by joining YB. We decided to become part of it and try to give something back to people in our city, our state, and our country.
By joining, we hope to learn from students who have been part of this group for a longer time. We want to represent the young scientific community in order to keep engaging people into synthetic biology and actively participating with the society involving biosecurity topics, national and internationally. For now, Chihuahua’s YB team is still growing so when we are still thinking of ideas we want to do to involve the society. For next semester, the plan is to register Youth Biotech as a student group in LiFE since iGEM Tec-Chihuahua is registering as part of it, which will provide us with more facilities to work with the support of our college.
Below you can see a picture of the team members who decided to join Youth Biotech!
UN Biodiversity Conference
"The rich and almost infinite array of life on this planet also underpins our own survival."
These were the words that the United Nations Environment Executive Director, Erik Solheim, said and that iGEM Tec-Chihuahua adopted to make a positive change in the society. We have noticed of the biggest concerns people have about science. This concern is that science and new technologies can cause a tremendous catastrophe on the environment. We want not only to make diffusion of synthetic biology but also to make sure that people fully understand the science behind it. We are responsible students who want to know what other people think about synthetic biology and our project, but also want to comprehend other's way of thinking.
Several opportunities present to those who give their best. Having said this, we were able to collaborate with the translation of the ERA guide mentioned before. With this, we could help the doctors that wrote this guide contribute something transcendental to the Cartagena Protocol. As we mentioned in the button above, we also decided to register ourselves as part of Youth Biotech.
These two factors opened doors for us. Ph.D. María Mercedes Roca gave us great news, iGEM Tec-Chihuahua and all the members of Youth Biotech are invited to attend the United Nations Biodiversity Conference.
In this conference, biotechnology masters will discuss environmental and safety issues. This event will take place at Sharm El Sheik, Egypt from November 17th to 29th of 2018. The meetings that will take place in this conference will be the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 14), the 9th meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COPMOP9) and the 3rd meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (COPMOP3).
The theme of the Conference is “Investing in biodiversity for people and planet.” Here, governments will address important questions raised by emerging technologies, including how approaches in synthetic biology can be regulated to maximize the potential benefits while minimizing the risks, according to Dr. Cristiana Paşca Palmer, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The ERA guide we collaborated with is going to be presented and discussed in a side-event at this Conference by Ph.D. María Mercedes Roca.
Tec-Chihuahua 2018 wants to know different points of view, good or bad, and contribute something to the community so people could make their own point of view based on great backup information. Therefore, we found incredibly important to review alternatives for this topic.
We are truly grateful for being helpful in this incredible work and we are very honored to have contributed to something so important for those who want to put their biotechnology company using GMOs, as established in the Cartagena Protocol.
XXVI International Apicola Update Congress 2019
For our last activity of Education and Public Engagement section in iGEM, we wanted to reach the beekeeping sector again but a little different this time. Having done everything we accomplished through these months, we wanted to close this section with our participation in something that involved beekeepers.
After 25 years of development, the International Apicola Update Congress will be held for the first time in a northern entity of the country. In 2019, Chihuahua, our state, will host this important event thanks to its great contribution to the national honey production with great quality products.
The congress is organized and carried out annually by the National Association of Veterinary Doctors Specialists in Bees, A.C. (ANMVEA, A.C.). It is really important for beekeepers because here they have every tool they need at the back of their hands to solve beehives issues.
For our team, keeping in touch with experts is essential for the diffusion of synthetic biology and for receiving feedback of the project, that's why we contacted ANMVEA, A.C., the most important Mexican beekeeping association. We showed them this year´s project and they completely loved it. They were amazed at our engagement and commitment to bees.
One day while we were discussing the project, they mentioned that they were very happy because we were working with bees, this due to the lack of research for beekeeping. The secretary of ANMVEA, A.C., MVZ Ernesto Tanus Sánchez, explained that this area needed a lot of research because beekeepers nowadays were 50+ years old and most of them were not related to science. They said that they needed young minds working to solve beekeeping problems and people who stayed updated with situations related to bees. ANMVEA, A.C. is concerned about the future of beekeeping. As well, they are aware of all the diseases and beekeeping issues that could be solved using new scientific techniques, such as synthetic biology.
As we mentioned before, almost no beekeeper is acquainted with synthetic biology or science in general. That's why iGEM Tec Chihuahua is looking forward to
introducing synthetic biology to professionals in this field. As well, we want to invite and inspire international beekeeping experts to relate to this newly emerging field.
To achieve this, we received an invitation from this national association to the XXVI International Apicola Update Congress 2019 from ANMVEA, A.C. to present this new science branch and our project in next year´s congress.
With an event of such major, we want to spread knowledge and to dialog with people who may have doubts about science. Therefore, we will be attending to the next year's invitation to the ExpoChihuahua Convention Center on May 22nd to generate knowledge and acceptance in people outside the lab.
We hope not only to spread knowledge but to get to know what people think about synthetic biology and the techniques it is using to try to contribute something good to the environment. We want to keep going with this project that’s why we look to keep engaging the community even when the Giant Jamboree has already taken place.
By assisting, we expect to learn more about bees and to implement everything international experts teach us to enhance our project and our social panorama with the rest of the community.
