Revision as of 22:47, 15 October 2018

Public Engagement

Activities Fair

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   <figcaption>Grace flyering for iGEM at the University of Virginia Activities Fair!  </figcaption>

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On August 27, 2018 we made a flyer and a trifold for the annual University of Virginia Activities Fair, where there are more than 450 student organizations, ranging from Salsa Dancing to, well, iGEM. We had members of our team hand out flyers and give out our team pins and stickers as well.

Over 200 people expressed interest and joined our email listserv and will hopefully apply to be a member next year's Virginia iGEM team!

Summer Camp

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   <figcaption> Some team members posing with Shaun Moshasha, CEO of Open BioLabs.  </figcaption>

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   <figcaption> Joseph and Kevin discussing world problems related to sythetic biology. (Photo taken by Angela Yi) </figcaption>

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We attended the Kids College summer camp held at Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center (CATEC) “Manipulating Life Itself & Human Cyborg” in collaboration with Charlottesville Open Bio Lab. The students of the summer camp was aged between 12 to 16.

We helped them run and understand the gels, talked about our iGEM project, and helped them brainstorm what kind of world problems they could solve with synthetic biology. Here's something of the ideas they came up with:

• Microplastics in ocean: Put dormant bacteria into plastic that becomes active through contact with salt water. The bacteria will then degrade the plastic.

• Cleaner air: Put a plant on top of a bird and collect all the CO2 in the air. When the bird collects all the CO2 it can, it will go into a pit and die.

• Mad science: Combine the DNA of a rhino, cat, and jellyfish to make a glowing unicorn cat.

The students came up with many interesting project ideas related to synthetic biology; it was definitely a huge success for students in the community to explore the field of synthetic biology!

Pizza and Pipettes (Seminar)

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   <figcaption> Students working through the PurSolutions module and learning how to use a micropipette! </figcaption>

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   <figcaption> Nick explaning the basics of using a pipette. </figcaption>

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   <figcaption> Ryan leading a discussion on synthetic biology and the module.</figcaption>

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Besides doing research, another important mission of iGEM is to let the public learn more about the emerging field of synthetic biology. At UVA, we don’t really have a department dedicated for synthetic biology, and many students don’t actually have an idea on what synthetic biology actually is. In order to let more students learn about the field of synthetic biology, the 2018 Virginia iGEM team hosted a seminar, Pizza and Pipettes, for UVA students.

We collaborated with PurSolutions, by using the self-assembly module developed by PurSolutions. Through the module, participants learned about self-assembly and got a sense of protein engineering. They even got some hands-on wetlab experience by assembling the smallest tubiline in the world! After learning that proteins are useful tools for solving problems, we had them think about the DNA level of biology. Since proteins are encoded by and created from DNA, what would happen if we modified DNA?

The event covered topics in molecular biology and brought it into synthetic biology. Participants also brainstormed about what world problems they would like to solve with synthetic biology. Many people came up with the problems of air pollution, microplastic, and even world hunger.

Link to PurSolutions’ self-assembly module: <a href="http://puresoluble.com/self-assembly" target="_blank">http://puresoluble.com/self-assembly</a>

Public Forum

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   <figcaption> Our flyer for our public forum. (Design by Dylan Culfogienis) </figcaption>

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There were two things that inspired us to develop this discussion packet that can be used to host public forums, a company that rejected us, and a public forum that we participated in.

First, while trying to reach out to some bio-manufacturing companies for potential collaborations, a company turned us down and said that they did not want to be associated with “genetic engineered bacteria”. We followed up with them and had a short talk about why they did not wanted to be associated about genetic engineered bacteria. We found out that the only reason they tried so hard to get non-GMO certified, and emphasized so much on that, was solely because of “customer reasons”, since customers prefer “non-GMO” products. We were actually surprised about how customers choose non-GMO over GMO products, when they sometimes don’t actually know the difference.

Then, we went to a public forum, Editing Our Evolution: Rewriting the Human Genome. This public forum was part of the Building with Biology initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and hosted by Charlottesville Open Bio Labs. Our team participated in the forum, and found that the scenarios we discussed about during the event was an effective way of letting people express their opinions on certain topics, and get to know some scientific facts that they never knew about from the participating scientists.

Inspired by these two factors, our team decided to make a discussion packet on the topic of GMO products. We chose some products that people encounter in their daily life, so it’s closer to everyone’s day to day experience, and could sparkle more discussion. The topics in the packet went from synthetic leather, genetically modified corn, cultured meat, to some final thoughts on GMO, such as whether the labels actually influence consumers’ decisions when they go shopping.

After developing the discussion packet, our team members came together with our advisor, Professor Kozminski, and some other community members whose profession is not in the scientific field to have a run through of the discussion scenarios. We got some valuable insights and feedbacks from the attendees.

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   <img src="/images/HumanPractices/forum2.jpg" alt="PublicForum">
   <figcaption>Professor Kozminski in action discussing GMOs. </figcaption>

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   <img src="/images/HumanPractices/forum3.jpg" alt="PublicForum">
   <figcaption> Members of the community actively engaging in discussion. </figcaption>

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Attendees at the run through gave us some valuable insights on what people’s perspective on GMO products were. Many people’s thoughts on GMO products are influenced by their families, especially if they came from a family that emphasized a lot on “organic” and “non-GMO”. During the part of synthetic leather, an interesting discussion was brought up. Since the materials that are involved in leather production are mostly the byproduct of the livestock industry, will the mass production of microbial leather lead to a waste of all these byproducts that are currently being put into use? Discussion on genetically modified corn brought up some concerns that people had. “Do GMO products really have a correlation with allergies?” “Do these corn deplete the soil more quickly and let the soil have not enough resource to replenish?” For the section on cultured meat, some self-identified vegetarians had a feeling that they don’t know if these meat grown in the lab should be considered “vegetarian”, since the technique of its production still involves of taking a sample of cells from a real animal. “This is just really weird, I can’t imagine having meat that is produced in this way put into my burger” was also a comment from someone that is non-vegetarian. Throughout the run through, many people said that they do not have enough knowledge on GMO products, and thus lead to their fear for it. Some also thought that more policies and regulations should be made on GMO products.

The discussion on GMO products crossed through the fields of science, technology, politics, ethics, economics, and even religions. We realized that when trying to market a product that is related to GMO, one should be more aware that customers are always trying to get more information, only when they have enough information will they think that they are able to make a decision. The market of a GMO product should also avoid using some words that people generally don’t like, those words often lead to a rejection regardless of whether people have tried to actually know more about the product or not.

After the run through, We fixed some parts in the discussion packet and improved it by adding some supplement information for those who didn’t really understand how the techniques worked and wanted to get an idea of it, and also modified the questions a bit so they are more specific and the discussion could go on smoothly. We envision this packet as a ready-to-use discussion packet for public forums, and hope that future teams may put it into use.

View our discussion packet <a href="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/5/5d/T--Virginia--2018_Discussion_Packet.pdf" target="_blank">here!</a>