Team:Valencia UPV/Public Engagement
Social outreach: exploring the BioArt world
Education: enhancing hand-on STEAM curricula
European Research Night: fighting against common SynBio misconceptions
Design Factory Exhibition: promoting SynBio to the university community
Education and Public Engagement
Synthetic Biology challenges have only real sense taking into account the effect it has on the improvement of nowadays issues. However, it is also one of the most controversial scientific fields for the public opinion.
Currently, access to Synthetic Biology field is hampered by several barriers, such as the necessity of wide technical knowledge and high-cost technologies to carry out any experiment. In the same way, the presence of common misconceptions in regard to bacteria and genetic engineering makes it even more difficult to reach to the general public.
Thus, our aim is to break down all these barriers to increases SynBio accessibility into the society.
To do so, we have created Printeria: a bio-engieering device capable of automating the process of printing genetic circuits in bacteria.
Printeria: SynBio has never been easier
Under the core values of affordability and reproducibility, Printeria is a compact device with which SynBio can be approached to the public in an innovative, friendly and reduced-cost way.
Thus, Printeria has been conceived as both and educational and bioartistic tool. With a user-friendly software, it can introduce SynBio into the high school classrooms without the necessity of lab equipments. In the same way, it offers a wide range of opportunities for the bioartist disposal.
To prove its social usefulness, we have explored Printeria impact possibilities into society.
Bio Art
“To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” - Leonardo da Vinci
Art exists since the origins of humanity. Likewise, science has always been prompted by a desire of knowing more and more about the world, the nature and life.
While developing Printeria, we had the chance to get into the vast applications of the BioArt world: a contemporary art form that adapts scientific methods and biotechnology to explore living systems as artistic subjects (1).
As a consequence, we decided to promote the existant synergy between art and science through the BioArt expansion among society.Printone: express yourself
While creating our href=https://2018.igem.org/Team:Valencia_UPV/Public_Engagement target="_blank">Part Collection, we decided to provide bioarists with a complete DNA toolkit for their artworks production. To do so, we assembled several transcriptional units with our different reporteres (GFPmut3, sfGFP, YGP, mRFP, amilCP) and a variety of promoteres and RBS of different strenghts. By this way, we finally obtained Printone: a palette of pigmented bacteria, with different colours and intensity tones, for the entire disposal of the bioartist.
We used this variety of colours to introduce, both ourselves and the general public, to the Microbial Art: agar plates artworks using living cells. In fact, some of this samples were given to the bioartists María Peñil and Dr. Mehmet Berkmen, who were part of our href=https://2018.igem.org/Team:Valencia_UPV/Integrated_Humantarget="_blank">Integrated Human work, to provide them with new tones to paint with.
FOTO COLORES
Activity: Bioartist for one day
How to attract people to SynBio? It is possible to achieve this challenge in a subjective and eye-appealing way? While developing Printeria, we realized the BioArt could be the perfect way to approach SynBio in a nerby and attractive way to the non-research world. Thus, o divulgue the BioArt field, we designed the practical session ‘Bioartist for one day’.
The activity took place in the Mustang Art Gallery (Elche), a cultural space dedicated to the diffusion of contemporary art. This workshop involved last year high school students of arts, science and social sciences, so we could be able to interact with a wide range of different profiles.
In this activity, they created their own ‘living masterpice’. Previously, we did detailed explanation on how to properly use the lab material and cells during simple microbiology protocols, such as plating. Thus, they could learn both from the art and microbiology worlds.
Then, using solid agar plates as a canvas, inoculating loops as brushes and the palette of pigmented bacteria we self-made in the lab as tempera, they blew their minds to do imaginative Microbial Art. As soon as they finished, petri dishes were collected, kept and sealed for a later incubation in our lab. Finally, a gallery of all their artistic works was published in this Instagram account, so everyone could share it and so create interest into bacterial art.
We also thought that, in the network era, students could be a great help in the promotion of SynBio by simple talking about their experiences, so we created the Instagram hashtag #MAGPRINTERIA to encourage them to share their own pics and impressions during the activity.
Yturralde: fusion between art and science
José María Yturralde is an spanish artist widely known for his relationship with science. He collaborated with artists and scientists to expand and redefine his understanding of shapes, and explored ways that the mainframe computer could be used as a tool for complementing his art practices (2). In this context, we thought it could be a great idea to introduce him to the vast possibilities of the BioArt world and so learn about his life experiences.
We decided to recreate one of his most famous masterpieces, from the collection 'Impossible Figures', with our own genetic engineered bacteria. To do so, we printed a 3D mold of the figure to delimitate the barriers of the drawing, so we could then inoculate each coloured bacteria in a compartiment of the solid agar medium. Finally, using bigger than usual agar plates, we were able to recreate his artwork perfectly.
Impossible figure artwork. Yturraldes's masterpiece and the equivalent Microbial Art version
Future generations
High school students are eager to know more about the world they live in. However, students rarely learn about Synthetic Biology inside classrooms. As there is a lack of hand-on STEM curricula, basic concepts such as gene, DNA and bacteria are only explained theoretically. In order to stimulate young people to be curious about science, we believed this educational approach needed to be changed. With Printeria, it is possible.
Educational approach
To do so, we gave some talks to several high school classes, in which we talked about:
-
iGEM and SynBio as a multidisciplinary research field
We talked about the iGEM competition and the future of SynBio as a research field that can help to solve nowadays issues.
-
Bacteria: enemies or friends?
We wanted to beat the stigma against bacteria, explaining their importance and benefits, not only naturally (i.e.: they form our microbiote and they are the base of the trophic chains), but also in biotechnology (i.e.: bacteria as biofactories for medicine, industry, etc.)
-
Printeria: how it really works?
As SynBio is not only about biology, we thought it was also highly important to demonstrate the role of engineering and electronics. Thus, we decided to explain them, from an educational approch, the basis of Printeria: our software and how the digital microfluidic system allows us to control each biotech process with high accuracy. During the talk, we showed them several videos and photos to ease each explanation and to ensure studens could understand such kind of a priori complex concepts.
European Research Night
The European Research Night is a wide-public event, promoted under the EU Programme Horizon 2020, whose objective is to to encourage the scientific/technical youth vocations and lay public interest to science. It involves research organizations, science museums and public organizations all around Europe.
Activity
As part of this event the City of Arts and Science, one of the biggest scientific and cultural leisure complexes in Europe, organized a complete program of free access activities. We were invited to be part of this program, where we presented Printeria to a wide range of interested people from all ages, who dialogued with us about common synbio misconceptios.
Design Factory Exhibition/h3>
UPV_iGEM is part of the Design Factory Global Network, a network of universities innovation hubs whose mission is to create change in the world of learning through passion-based culture.
Activity
As part of the Design Factory Exhibition, we we had the chance to show Printeria to all the university community and to introduce the basic concepts of SynBio to those who didn't know about them.
References
(1) Bioart: An introduction https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151123203619.htm
(2) Bravo, E. G. & García, J. A. (2015). Yturralde: Impossible Figure Generator. Leonardo 48(4), 366-374. The MIT Press. Retrieved October 8, 2018, from Project MUSE database.