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 (Figure 5). 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 (Figure 4).
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 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.
The 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
Arts
To share and popularize the scientific knowledge has become an important part of the scientist work. As our project concerns the whole population, and as many women are unaware of the different contraceptive methods. We found that using art as a bridge/link to share our project. Indeed, arts in education will promote creativity, thinking and learning! The dialogue between Arts and Science is here represented by the work of different artists.
The artists that worked with us are not related to a scientific education. They created a piece of art starting from what we taught them about. The aim of this work is to sensibilise internet users to the existence of the vaginal microbiota/flora and the vulva through the vision of non scientific artists.
Social media
Artists from different backgrounds made artworks about they’re vision of the vulva, the vagina and its microbiota. We decided to create a series of artworks made by artists, in order to answer to the public questionments.
To the question: What is your vision of a vulva?
Barzoii “artistic” answer : It’s a forest inside a vulva.
The Public will be entertain, and enjoy looking at an art piece, and then we are giving the “scientific” answer to the question.
Vaginal flora or vaginal microbiota are the microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi etc.) that colonize the vagina...
Knowledge: Vulva Anatomy
What is your vision of a vulva?
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Knowledge: The Vaginal Microbiota
What is a vaginal “flora”?
Knowledge: Bacteria, Microbiota
What is living inside of the vagina?
“Spotlight”: A local popularization event
In the continuation to the Art in Education series, we decided to have an organized event with a local art association called “Weven”.
The event will invite 8 different artists - from photo taking, to drawing and painting - to have the same reflexion than for “Art in Education”, but this time, they will be exposed for the night in a café, and people will be able to discuss with them, and with us.
The aim of this event is to popularize synthetic biology and our project through the vision of non scientific artist.
This event will take place in November 2018. We will document the wiki in this page about the event.
Artists will have to create a piece of art from a simple information we give to them. They will pick one or more subject and answer to the questions in an artistic way.
About Synthetic Biology
Gene
In your point of view, what is a Gene?
What Is a Biobrick?
How does gene synthesis look like?
Parts
We asked the artist to make an artistic version of the Synthetic Biology parts and give their idea of what it is.
Genetically Engineered Machines
What is a Genetically Engineered Machine?
How will be our future by using the G.E.M?
About our subject
Vulva Anatomy
What is your vision of a vulva?
Vaginal Microbiota/Flora
What is a vaginal “flora”?
What is a bacterium?
Balance
How sensitive is a vagina?
How sensitive is a vulva?
How does a genital disease look like?
Contraception
What is your point of view?
Whats is a spermicidal molecule?
Taking the birth control pill, how does it feels?
Menstruations
What do people think about menstruations?
How do you feel when you have your periods?
What do you think one can feel when they have their periods?
Comic Book: Synthetic biology & Vaginal Microbiota
With the help of the artist @Minskiga, we created a popularization comic book. There are two main objectives to this comic book:
- The first one is to answer to the community questions about contraceptives and synthetic biology applied to it.
- The second one is to create a path between scientific knowledge and non educated people through a storyline.
Minskiga is an artist student who hasn’t any biology education and therefore will have her own perception of scientific words. And this is exactly what we want. Indeed, she uses her art skill to describe something that some non educated person will not obviously understand through scientific words.
We worked with Minskiga to give a definition of synthetic biology.
This page is the result of discussion with the artist. The aim of this art is to entertain the public and learn them the fundamentals of Synthetic biology.
Through social networks and the survey, people asked us a lot of questions about our project. We used those questions to build a storyline and answer to most of them.
This comic book is the result of more than 3 months of work, and still needs to be improve. You can find out a lot more about the comic book in our Integrated Human Practices page!