Passing on the Knowledge to the Younger Generation

Excited by the possibilities synthetic biology has to offer, our team aimed to involve younger generation in this novel field of science by educating them in schools, during pupil-olympiads, and meetings of other societies.

Our team members continued the tradition of previous Vilnius-Lithuania iGEM teams and held lectures for students in different schools across the country. During these visits scholars had an opportunity to learn the main principles of synthetic biology and laboratory work bearing in mind SynDrop project as an example. Also, high-school students have visited our laboratory in Vilnius University Life Sciences Center and implemented their knowledge into practice, e.g. learning how to balance a centrifuge or using Burker camera in order to calculate cells.

Additionally, we delegated our member Valentas to represent our team in organising the 51st LitBO (Lithuanian Biology Olympiad) and its bootcamp where students were preparing for the International Biology Olympiad. He was responsible for giving lectures about fundamental biological principles and synthetic biology, as well as planning experiments for students.

Our instructor Auksė held a lecture for Turing School students (13-18 yrs. of age) who planned to become future inventors and leaders of the IT sector. She delineated the possibilities of synthetic biology, revealed future applications of CRISPR/Cas system, and most importantly described ways of how IT skills could be applied in bioinformatics and above mentioned fields.

DNA Day's Celebration

Looking for new ideas and methods to educate school children and hear their thoughts on synthetic biology and our project, we found a spectacular occasion in the calendar. Our team organised an event marking the 65th anniversary of the day in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick published paper in the Nature about the structure of DNA. There could not have been a better occasion to teach scholars about synthetic cells and gene expression in non-cellular systems. Additionally, this day was never celebrated in Vilnius University Life Sciences Center before, thus our team settled to launch a new continuous tradition.

The main attraction of the DNA Day was a number of interactive activities designed for curious schoolchildren of various Lithuanian schools. All activities introduced the main idea and concepts of our project as well as the Life Sciences Center itself as a place where significant research happens. Schoolchildren visited several departments of this Center: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of Botany and Genetics, Department of Eukaryote Gene Engineering, Department of Bioinformatics, Sector of Microtechnologies, Department of Immunology and Cell Biology and Department of Protein-DNA Interactions. At first glance, Life Sciences Center looks a bit like a labyrinth, so in order to make this Day more fun and interesting for students, we set up orienteering competition. Through interactive activities we revealed why it was important to visit the abovemention departments, and how they were related to developing our project’s idea. Pupils were given some tasks and their answers led them to next points in another departments.

First of all, after speaking about laboratory safety rules and showing equipment which included pipetmans, centrifugal machine, thermocycler and other, we explained the central dogma of molecular biology. Pupils learned about several methods we use while carrying out experiments. For example, they were able to try dilution while doing it with some colorful solutions and measuring the exact solution’s concentration with a spectrophotometer.

During other activities schoolchildren had to identify particular restriction sites of DNA sequence relying on activity of given restriction enzymes. It helped pupils to learn about making recombinant DNA which is used to transfer information.

In the Sector of Microtechnologies participants got to know how proteins are inserted into synthesised liposomes. We explained our project’s main idea to pupils and how it might be used in such fields as genetics or molecular biology.

Schoolchildren enjoyed spending a day in our research centre very much and were really interested in solving our biological puzzles. Quoting pupils: “this way it was easier to solidify the gained knowledge”. Later all attendees of the DNA Day were invited to a science communication lecture #DNAtoDo held by professor R. Meškys, our former PI. Professor had presented the latest technology and innovations in the field of life sciences and pointed their impact on our everyday life. Relating this lecture to the purpose of the celebration, he introduced not only traditional DNA, but also XNA (synthetic, Xeno DNA) and its possible future applications.

The final part of DNA Day’s celebration was a coaching-type discussion about the provisional steps in turning our dreams into ideas and those ideas into real world applications. We invited some of the Vilnius-Lithuania iGEM 2018 stakeholders and partners to initiate a dialogue between them, the representatives of our team, and the community of Life Sciences Center. During the discussion, possibilities and most common difficulties which young scientists face while trying to implement their ideas in a university or by launching startups were covered. Considering that more and more teams set up their own companies after iGEM, we suggested an idea of developing our project into a possible startup. We learned that stakeholders were impressed by our project, however some concerns regarding complexity and time consumption were put into light. During the discussion an idea was suggested for us to develop a software which would ease the implementation of our project goals and would also be useful for other scientists in the field.

To sum up, celebration of the DNA Day allowed schoolchildren to take a glance at the project we have created for this year’s competition. It was a pleasure to see how enthusiastically pupils enjoyed the orienteering competition and how inspired they were after understanding our projects’ aim and significance. Even though it was kind of an entertainment for schoolchildren, we also felt encouraged to consider our project in all its bearings and find more creative ways to improve it. In addition Vilnius-Lithuania team members had a great opportunity to take a different look at the subjects they studied and pass their knowledge to the new generation. The discussion not only gave us information about startup-possibilities, but also inspired us to consider setting up one ourselves - we became sure about the necessity of our project and gained insights on how we could improve it.

Finally, we hope that the DNA Day’s celebration will become a pleasant yearly tradition in Vilnius University Life Sciences Center.