Summary

Although modern science is rapidly evolving, education has always played an important role, serving as a bridge between science and society. We believe that science education is not only confined to the classroom or laboratory, but is also a means of engaging, inspiring, and empowering the next generation. This idea and community revitalization efforts go hand in hand very well, and we are committed to putting it into practice.

Our project aims to promote local revitalization while deepening understanding of biodiversity, synthetic biology, and iGEM. Through a board game on biodiversity, which took advantage of the local characteristics of Noda City, we helped to raise local residents' interest in the local environment and contributed to the revitalization of the community in both environmental and social aspects.

We also actively introduced synthetic biology and iGEM within the event. We believe that it is important to convey the appeal of science to young people in Japan who are becoming less interested in science, and we passionately communicated the appeal of iGEM as an international competition and the significance of our own research. In this way, we encouraged children's interest in science and showed them the path of how synthetic biology can help them in the future.

Regional revitalization and introduction of synthetic biology and iGEM

Board Game Play

Board games were conducted at Toneunga Koryuukan in Noda City, Chiba Prefecture. Details of the board games are shown below.

The Game of Genetic Diversity (2024.05~08)

This board game was developed to enhance understanding of genetic technology and biodiversity. It was aimed at school children and their parents...

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Science Connect

We decided to participate in the iGEM Japan Community because we agree with the following three points.

We thought that if each team was doing their own education, we would not be able to convey the diversity of synthetic biology, so we planned a booth exhibit to let people know that each team is trying to solve various problems using synthetic biology.

We hope that the exhibition will help people learn about the various challenges that synthetic biology is trying to solve. We wanted to create an event that would fulfill learning in a wide range of directions, so we conducted the event in booth, stage, and experimental classroom formats.

We thought that by doing this as a community event, we would be able to provide continuous education.

We were especially aware of the importance of the first point: BotchanLab-Tokyo is often asked to provide science communication to revitalize the community at local events, but we tend to introduce our own research and then introduce synthetic biology. Instead, we thought it would be important to give participants an opportunity to understand the various research topics by visiting our booth, and to give them an opportunity to experience synthetic biology in an integrated manner. For this reason, we exhibited at a booth.

The concept of the event was “to have a sense of challenge for students in junior and senior high school in terms of sentiment,” and the project was carried out in cooperation with the high school.