Team:Montpellier/Public Engagement
Events
During our project we participated in different events with the goal of popularizing synthetic biology and presenting our project to the public. In this section, we elaborate on the different events and how we used them to promote learning and engagement in the community.
Presentation to our scientific peers: Feedback from the community
Before and after the bulk of our wetlab research during the summer, we presented our project to our colleagues at our host institution, the Centre de Biochimie Structurale (Center for Structural Biology) in Montpellier, for feedback.. Additionally, we presented at the end of the summer to the DGIMI lab (Diversity Genomes & Insect Microorganisms Interactions, INRA) to further refine our scientific presentation skills and to obtain additional feedback from scientists in a broad range of sub-disciplines.
Fête de la Science
On October 5th and 6th, we participated in the ‘Fête de la science’ at the Faculty of Education at the University of Montpellier, a large, annual nationwide event to promote interaction between the public and the scientific community. There, we taught 10-15 year old students and their parents about DNA, bacteria, and genetically modified organisms.
Construction of an helical double stranded DNA, cardboard constructions allowed us to show them what DNA is and how the cell can use it to encode every protein it needs. Moreover, we realised several posters that explain synthetic biology (Figure 1).
The Cardboard game:
We constructed a game made out of cardboard pieces to explain to kids (from 10 to 16) how to make a genetic design. They first learned a simple map constituted of: Promoter - RBS - Gene - Terminator.
Then once they could remember the “phrase” they had to find out how the expression will work with or without some part.
Because kids usually prefer to see actual things rather than being explain concepts we brought plates with transformed bacteria that produce RFP or GFP (Figure 2). In large plate without antibiotic we put our hand, our mouth to show differents kind of bacteria from differents parts of the body.
The most important thing is they had a lot of question and curiosity about synthetic biology!
While talking to children, we also met adults with whom we discussed about the Vagineering project!
Practical work in a high school
We also organized and participated to two lectures for a high school class. We believe our role as students is also to present what we are doing to motivate high school students. As we mentioned earlier French people still have a bad vision of GMOs even though this vision is less importantly shared by younger people. However we still find that it is important to explain to the youth how things such as genetic engineering works for their scientific culture. This is why we decided to work with the iGEM Sorbonne University Team to do classes to highschool students. In the first class we presented gave a basic overview biology lecture about DNA and mutations with a hands-on practical lab component (pictures 1 and 2). This lecture had the main goal of giving them the main ideas of the living and how mutations can appear by diverse ways. The experiments conducted were the exposition of yeasts to UV rays during different amount of time. The second class was a week after the first one. This allowed us to analyze the grown yeasts and explain the students how to analyze results objectively. We then explained what synthetic biology was and exposed our projects.
Synthetic Biology Workshop, A feedback from students
October the 10th, we presented the mechanisms of synthetic biology, and an example of application with our project Vagineering, to 2 classes of Master degree in Health Biology/Bioproduction, and in Host Microorganism interactions. For 1 hour and a half, we had the time to introduce them to synthetic biology mechanisms, and the methods we used (wet lab and dry lab). But also about our project and all its aspects. iGEM competition what is synthetic biology ? A possible application : Vagineering At the end of the presentation, we discussed about the viability of our project, and the popularization of our project. This experience was very rewarding for our team, and having the point of view of students, that directly are the potential future users of Vagineering.
fig4) Class of Master 1 Host Microorganisms Interaction, Montpellier UniversityThe press
Smile, you're on camera! The promotion of our iGEM project is important, both for allowing many people to know about our project and for helping us for the sponsoring. For the first iGEM Montpellier Team edition, we were lucky to be interviewed by several media.
June 6, 2018 : EUSynbioBeta
IGEM MONTPELLIER 2018 : A NEW NON-HORMONAL CONTRACEPTION
June 29, 2018 : MadmoiZelle
Vagineering, pour qu’une bactérie devienne un moyen de contraception
July 28, 2018 : Inspira Biotech
IGEM Montpelier presents Vagineering, the proposal of a probiotic contraceptive
August 3, 2018 : ChEEk MAGAZINE
Vagineering: Ils veulent faire d’une bactérie un moyen de contraception non hormonal
September 10, 2018 : Midi Libre
Contraception : l’idée géniale des étudiants montpelliérains
September 12, 2018 : France 3
Montpellier : 9 étudiants travaillent sur une bactérie révolutionnaire pour la contraception féminine
October 14, 2018 : Blasting Pop
France : Une piste de contraception non-hormonale explorée par 9 étudiants montpelliérains