Archbishop Jordan High School

The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team presented at Archbishop Jordan High School to a group of 20 Grade 10, 11, and 12 students on May 29, 2024. The event involved three iGEM team members who gave an introduction to synthetic biology topics, shared how to get involved with iGEM, and gave research advice to students going into post-secondary. We also gave a general overview of our project, highlighting how we could engineer E. coli to recycle wool waste and repurpose it into spider silk.

To help the students review the structure of a DNA molecule and highlight how synthetic biologists manipulate DNA, we lead the students in a simple candy DNA craft. To finish our presentation, we offered students the chance to share feedback on our presentation style and research topic as a whole (via QR code).

While the presentation was well received and students enjoyed the free candy, the activity was too simple for this age group and was not sufficiently linked to our project. Overall, we gained experience explaining our topic in simple terms and bonded with students entering into post-secondary, but failed to meaningfully engage them in current synthetic biology topics. Future school outreach events should include more meaningful experiments that are linked to our hands-on lab work.

As well, no students chose to fill out our voluntary feedback survey, so we did not get any comments to inform our presentation style or project. Future outreach events should include dedicated time for students to fill out a more accessible feedback form (i.e. a paper copy) so that we can identify weak points in our presentation style and project.

Overall, our first school outreach event was a great boost to the team's morale as we successfully delivered our presentation and felt encouraged to contact more schools. We talked about what makes synthetic biology so fascinating and inspired the students to consider the possibilities of what they can do in science. Our main takeaways were that we wanted a more concrete way to get useful information and feedback from education events. Additionally, while synthetic biology was a good place to start with, we wanted to focus on more specific and relatable topics for future presentations, and the problems we are solving.

T.D. Baker School

The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team presented at T.D. Baker School to two Grade 9 classes, 31 and 33 students respectively, on June 11, 2024. The event involved four of our iGEM team members who gave an introduction to synthetic biology and the iGEM competition. We also gave a general overview of our project, highlighting how we could engineer E. coli to recycle wool from textile waste and repurpose it into spider silk.

To engage the students in practical science and illustrate the concepts of genetic engineering, an activity to visualize the DNA from strawberries was carried out to facilitate their learning. To finish, the students filled out survey forms that helped them reflect on their own practices in sustainable recycling of textile waste and what they had learned from our presentation.

The primary goal of this event was to introduce synthetic biology concepts, present our project in a simplified manner, and encourage the Grade 9 students to participate in iGEM once they are in high school. The event also aimed to encourage students to adopt sustainable textile practices, such as repurposing, reusing, or donating textiles instead of discarding them. In addition to focusing on sustainability in textile waste, the presentation aimed to gather feedback from the students on what they perceive as prevalent issues in the textile industry

This event was well-received, with students particularly enjoying the strawberry DNA extraction activity. The presentation sparked interest in our iGEM project and synthetic biology as learned from the feedback form, demonstrating the impact of our educational efforts. Feedback to improve for future presentations suggested simplifying content and adding more visual aids to make for a more engaging session.

Overall, the education event at T.D. Baker was a great experience as it provided valuable insights on how we can effectively introduce synthetic biology topics to younger audiences. The students showed great interest in the hands-on DNA extraction activity which reinforced the importance of hands-on, interactive activities for learning purposes. Our main takeaways were that we need to simplify our content further and incorporate more visual aids to make our presentations more engaging for the younger audiences. Moving forward, we will focus on connecting synthetic biology topics to real-world solutions, such as sustainable textile practices, to make our topics more impactful for the participants.

Esther Starkman School

The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team presented at Esther Starkman School to 27 students in Grade 9 on June 25, 2024. The event involved four of our iGEM team members who gave an introduction to fast fashion and how we can mitigate its impact through sustainable consumerism choices when shopping for clothes. From our textile analysis service interview, we had learned that the textile industry is extremely concerned with fast fashion and the amount of textile waste that is being put into landfills. As our project deals heavily with the textile industry, we wanted to demonstrate this big public concern about the amount of textiles being thrown into landfills. This led us to do a fast fashion event with Esther Starkman School.

At the beginning of our event, we introduced what iGEM is and gave a simplified overview of our project, highlighting how we were reducing keratin waste sources like wool from sheared sheeps to create spider silk. From there, we introduced what fast fashion is and its negative effects to the students. After learning about the tremendous concern of fast fashion, we directed the students to how they can avoid it which included investing in sustainable fashion and making their clothes last longer by modifying laundering practices.

To ensure this event was more than just an informational session, we incorporated practical tips on how to spot fast fashion while shopping, such as noticing unusually low prices, frequent turnover of trendy items, and investigating a company's social responsibility in material sourcing and usage. We also incorporated a fast fashion brand ethics game where each student received cards representing various brands rated in different categories like workers' empowerment, supply chain transparency, auditing practices, and labor policies. They were then instructed to say the rating of their brands across the categories and transfer their cards to students with brands that had higher grades across the categories. Through this game, students had the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of various brands and determine whether their practices aligned with fast fashion or sustainable fashion. To wrap up the event, we administered a feedback form to learn what the students had taken away from our presentation and gather suggestions on how we can improve our presentations in the future.

The primary goal of this event was to implement the learned concern of fast fashion from our textile analysis interview and share this concern with the public. We chose to focus on young students because we want to educate them early on about the environmental impact of fast fashion and guide them to spot fast fashion so that they can avoid it in their future consumer choices. This event was well received and most students learned about fast fashion for the first time and deepened their understanding of it as learned from the feedback form. The students were able to answer practical ways in which they could reduce their fast fashion habits as quoted below.

Areas for improvement that the students indicated for us included slowing down when we are delivering our presentation and including more details in our presentation. From this, we learned that in our next events, we should strive to pace ourselves during presentations and incorporate more details to improve engagement.

Overall, the event at Esther Starkman gave us a chance to highlight the environmental impacts of fast fashion and the importance of countering it with sustainable fashion choices. The main takeaways from this event were that interactive activities, such as the fast fashion brand ethics game, helped participants deepen their understanding of the topics we presented. Another takeaway that we learned from this event was that many students were learning about fast fashion for the first time and because they were able to present ways to reduce fast fashion habits, we succeeded in effectively highlighting the negative consequences of fast fashion. We also learned that future events would benefit from pacing our presentations and adding more details on our topics to engage the audience. We will take all of these insights into consideration as we develop new educational events so that they are informative while being understandable for our audience.

K-Days Collaboration with Future Energy System

The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team had the opportunity to collaborate with Future Energy Systems from the University of Alberta and run a booth on July 28, 2024, at the K-Days 2024 festival in Edmonton, Alberta. K-Days is a 10-day summer festival that takes place annually in Edmonton, Alberta. This year’s iGEM team collaborated with Future Energy Systems (FES) from the University of Alberta to run a booth at this festival. Future Energy Systems is a multidisciplinary research initiative that focuses on advancing and integrating innovative energy technologies that produce a low net-carbon energy footprint.

We were stationed in the Innovation and Technology Hub of the Sustainability Zone with Future Energy Systems at the Edmonton Expo Centre. Our five-hour shift included an interactive demonstration using Legos to teach the audience about the challenges in textile recycling. Each Lego piece represented the building blocks of raw materials, like the amino acids in keratin or the carbohydrates in cellulose. We had the audience build a clothing item—such as a shirt, pants, or shoes—from these raw materials. As they assembled their articles of clothing, they had to mix different Lego pieces, representing how real-world fabrics are often a blend of various materials.

After they created their blended clothing items, we explained our solution by having them act as enzymes. The participants broke down the blended materials by separating the different Lego pieces. Then they handed over the monomers representing carbohydrates for feedstock and used the amino acid Lego pieces to create a long strand of spider silk, illustrating how our project aims to recycle blended fabrics and upcycle the amino acids into valuable new materials like spider silk.

Along with the interactive demonstration, we also had a trifold poster outlining our project’s focus, including issues related to fast fashion, waste wool, low-value waste sources of keratin like chicken feathers, and the challenges of recycling cotton in textiles. The middle of the poster highlighted the workflow steps we are taking to address the challenges of blended fabrics in the textile industry as well as information on the iGEM competition. The last section focused on the biomedical applications of spider silk. The goal of the poster was to be informative and not overwhelmingly scientific as the audience at K-Days is very broad and everyone would have varying levels of scientific knowledge.

The goal of this event was to deliver our iGEM project to a broad audience. As there are an estimated 40,000 attendees that come annually to the Innovation and Technology Hub, we thought it would be a great opportunity to reach a wide audience and share information about our project’s problem and solution, as well as iGEM. Also, because of the diversity of the K-Days’ audience which includes professors, industry professionals, oil and gas workers, kids, teenagers, and more, we were able to improve our communication by adapting our delivery to help different audience members understand our work and its importance.

Our primary takeaway from this event is that even in a fast-paced, drop-in setting, taking the time to explain our concept is necessary to properly engage our audience. We found that when we spoke with attendees one-on-one, they asked insightful questions and showed interest in our project, even if they did not have a scientific background. However, we found the activity was hard for some younger audience members to understand because they could not visualize the Lego representing keratin, spider silk, or cotton. In the future, activities at such events will be more explicitly linked to our project and we will attempt to engage our participants one-on-one. The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team would like to extend their gratitude to the University of Alberta’s Future Energy Systems team for involving us in this event!

HYRS Program Meetup

Heading into August, our team began assessing the educational events we had done over the past few months. What we realized after looking at them was that most of our activities took place either in formal settings, like classrooms, or under time constraints, like the booth we ran at K-Days. We learned that we had never hosted an educational event where we could simply sit down with the public and have a long, informal discussion about iGEM and our project. Most of our previous educational events had a feedback form which the participants could fill out to help us assess how well we delivered information to them, what resonated with them, and what they learned from our talks. While this was a way for a two-way dialogue between our team and the public, we rarely had the chance to hear the public's concerns and questions in real time. We attempted to engage the participants one-on-one during the booth we ran at K-days, but we found that this approach was challenging due to the fast-paced, drop-in nature of the event. Having realized this, we started looking at ways we could reach and engage the general public in casual settings non-restricted by time.

On August 13, 2024, we had the opportunity to speak with high school students from the Alberta Innovates High School Youth Researcher Summer (HYRS) Program about iGEM. The HYRS program is a biomedical and health research program for high school students. The program is designed to help the students gain valuable research experience and make connections before entering University. As these students are engaged in research, we realized that they would be the perfect audience to talk to about iGEM.

At the event, we discussed the research projects the students had taken on during their involvement in the HYRS program. We then talked about the iGEM competition followed by our research project and how we were using synthetic biology in the lab to develop solutions to the global issue of textile waste. During this part, we realized that a lot of the students did not know what “synthetic biology” meant. However, once we explained the concept in simpler terms and provided specific examples, such as how synthetic biology can be used to engineer bacteria, the students were able to get a better understanding of the term. After discussing the iGEM competition and clarifying the meaning of synthetic biology, we wrapped up the event by sharing advice on how they could successfully navigate their future post-secondary studies.

Overall, the goal of the event was to have an informal conversation about iGEM and university life. We were able to have a real-time two-way dialogue between the general public and our team which allowed us to delve more deeply and provide detailed information on iGEM, synthetic biology, and university life to the participants. The main takeaway from this event was that even individuals with a science background have a hard time understanding words like “synthetic biology” unless they have had previous experience with it. It showed us how there was a need to provide background information and simplify complex science concepts to the general public so that the information we’re presenting to them is both comprehensible and insightful. For future events, we will take this insight into consideration and design our events so that they attempt to bridge the gap between specialized science knowledge and general public knowledge.

Ardrossan Farmers Market

As the iGEM competition neared its end, our team reflected on the educational events we had done. We realized that while we had focused extensively on the issue of textile waste, we had yet to highlight the benefits and properties of spider silk. We had not communicated to the public why spider silk is a desirable material and why we had chosen it over other potential materials that could have been made from the textile waste we were breaking down. To address this gap in our science communication, we decided that we needed to design and execute an educational event specifically focused on spider silk.

On August 20, 2024, we had the exciting opportunity to lead an arts and crafts activity for kids at the Ardrossan Farmers Market in Ardrossan, Alberta. This event was meaningful to us because, after interviewing David Patten who is on the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee at the University of Alberta, we recognized the importance of involving underrepresented communities in our project. Ardrossan is a rural area outside of Edmonton and doing an educational event there provided us the perfect chance to extend our outreach efforts beyond the city and engage with a less represented and non-local audience. The goal of the event was to communicate the properties and benefits of spider silk as it is a key component of our project and to involve rural communities in our outreach efforts.

For the event, we designed a fun and educational spider and spider web craft for kids. We had the children create yarn spiders by having them wrap yarn around cardboard and then use pipe cleaners as the spider’s legs. After making the spiders, we led the kids through a spider web craft to show that spider silk is used to make spider webs. Afterwards, we got them to put their spiders on the web to demonstrate that the silk used in webs is very strong and flexible while still being lightweight. While the kids were creating these crafts, other iGEM team members engaged the parents and provided them with more information on iGEM and our research project. This approach ensured that we were communicating our project to both children and adults.

Though the spider-related arts and crafts activity was successful, we recognized the need to present our entire project workflow. Because we focused on only one aspect of our project (spider silk) in this event, we realized that it was much harder for the participants to understand the full scope of our work. Going forwards, we will incorporate a flowthrough activity that walks through our entire research project, from the initial mixed textile waste inputs to the production of spider silk, to facilitate easier understanding of our project. From this event, we also realized that there was a need to have a comparison to the spider web the kids made to highlight the strength and flexibility of spider silk. For example, in future events, we could use an easily breakable material like playdough to create a web, place weights on it to demonstrate how it breaks, and then place the same weights on the web made by the kids to show how it remains intact which demonstrates the strength and flexibility of spider silk!

Overall, the key takeaways from this event included the need to incorporate a flowthrough activity that demonstrates the entire process of our project, from breaking down mixed textile waste to producing spider silk. We also realized that showing a comparison to emphasize the mechanical properties of spider silk would help the participants grasp the properties of spider silk. The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team would like to extend their gratitude to the Ardrossan Farmers Market team for involving us in this event!

TELUS World of Science

The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team had the opportunity to collaborate with TELUS World of Science Edmonton and run several tables where different arts and crafts activities relating to the ReneWool project were showcased on August 26, 2024. The Telus World of Science (TWOSE) is a broad-based science center in Edmonton operated by the (non-profit) Edmonton Space & Science Foundation. They have interactive science exhibits from many fields of science designed to inspire an interest in science. Over 200 participants came to our stations at the science center, and the vast majority were kids of all ages. After the successful activity at Ardrossan, involving arts and crafts for kids, we decided to continue this theme. We also wanted to highlight the special properties of spider silk in an interactive and fun way in the city, since our rural presentation went well! Additionally, we introduced a flowthrough activity to make it easier for participants to understand our project in simple terms, and connect it to the crafts.

The iGEM team organized an event at the TWOSE where they ran three stations. The first – and perhaps most popular – station was a pom-pom spider crafting activity where kids of all ages made colorful spider pets while they learned about iGEM from our large project poster. The left side of the tri-fold poster illustrates the problems our project aims to solve, including issues of fast fashion, low-value wool waste such as chicken feathers, and mixed fabric textiles. The middle section showed our project plan to enzymatically degrade the keratin and cellulose fibers from different waste sources into amino acids and sugars respectively, creating feedstock that can be used. The panel on the right demonstrated the use of the feedstock in powering another E. coli culture to produce spider silk proteins.

Families were encouraged to see our other tables, where they could make a spider-web activity using yarn and hole-punched paper plates to demonstrate the power of spider silk and craft their own web! Here, they learned about spiders in nature and the amazing properties of their silk by comparing the strength and flexibility of the nets by placing weights on them and showing them that they do not break even when stretched. This shows the tensile strength and elasticity of spider silk as a way to inspire participants to learn more about these natural wonders.

Additionally, our third station demonstrated a simplified version of our project using props and toy spiders to raise interest in the properties and potential of synthetic spider silk, as well as to inspire interest in synthetic biology and the incredible things it can do! At this station, we introduced the concept of DNA to children in an easy-to-understand way by hiding a paper cutout spider-silk gene under a large fake spider. Then, we would take out the gene and match it with a paper cut-out of a plasmid. Next, there was a container with a cartoon picture of an E. coli that the completed plasmid would be inserted into, shaken around, and opened to reveal new spider silk! The goal of this station was to explain the premise of the project in a simple, interactive way. We decided to use props in a simple flowthrough activity to explain concepts like sub-cloning and synthetic biology to a general audience because we found that previous attempts were, at times, difficult to understand, something that we learned from our meet-up with high school students from the HYRS program.

Finally, we directed participants to our other stations if they hadn’t already and to the strawberry DNA extraction activity that the L.A.B (Learning About Biology) area, run by the TWOSE, was running in parallel. We connected their DNA extraction activity to our stations by explaining that DNA is something that can be extracted, similar to how we work with DNA originally from spiders, and that it is a great place to learn about DNA for all ages. Finally, at each station parents could find a QR code linking them to our standard survey where they could fill it out for a chance to win $25, and we would gain further data on our project, and the related topics.

Fundamentally, the goal of this event was to have an informal, two-way dialogue between the iGEM team and members of the public in which our team could delve more deeply into the details of the project, iGEM as a competition, and the world of synthetic biology. We recognize the importance of scientific communication as a skill and a practice. We recognize that even those with a scientific background may struggle to understand concepts such as “synthetic biology” unless they have prior knowledge and that many fields of science are generally unknown to the general public. It showed us the need to provide simplified, general information on science concepts to all people so that they can learn more about not only our project, but about the capabilities of synthetic biology today. Scientific communication is a vital skill for educating less experienced people in a comprehensible and insightful manner. We hope that future iGEM teams will be inspired to take the initiative to communicate their scientific discoveries in a manner accessible to as many people as possible. The 2024 iGEM team extends its sincere thanks to the TELUS World of Science in Edmonton for facilitating our event and making it possible!

Educational Collaboration HECOL Repair Café

The 2024 UAlberta iGEM team had the opportunity to run a table with the Human Ecology Clothing (HECOL) Repair Café from the University of Alberta on September 13, 2024. We ran a partnered table in the Edmonton Clinic Health Academy (ECHA) building on the University of Alberta campus. We became acquainted with the Repair Café following an interview with the Textile Analysis Service from the University of Alberta on June 5, 2024. In order to learn more about the Repair Café and explore potential collaboration, three members of our team met with Janna and Dr. Rachel McQueen on June 20, 2024. During this meeting, we discussed the possibility of a joint event aimed at educating the public on making their clothes last longer, thereby addressing the significant issue of fast fashion which many of our interviewees had highlighted. The Repair Café was willing to partner with us.

Our team ran the event in the ECHA building on the university campus. We chose to hold the event in the ECHA building rather than the Repair Café or the Human Ecology Building because we wanted to reach a broader university audience who may not be aware of the fast fashion crisis. The main goal of this event was to educate students about the problem of fast fashion, demonstrating how our team was mitigating its impact through synthetic biology, while the Repair Café was offering a solution by repairing and repurposing clothing.

To enhance engagement, we distributed stickers of our logo, which encouraged students to interact with our table. The Repair Café showcased one of their summer projects, which involved transforming torn denim jeans into bags. This provided a practical example of the work they do at the Repair Café to our audience. We included these engaging elements at our table to avoid simply delivering information to the students. Our goal was to create incentives for the students to visit our table and ensure that the information we shared resonated with them long after the event.

Overall, the key takeaways from this event were that university students were particularly interested in learning about how synthetic biology contributes to the creation of sustainable solutions, as well as what the iGEM competition was. Many of the students we spoke to were unaware of the iGEM competition but they expressed their interest in participating in future iGEM teams from the University of Alberta. They were also enthusiastic about engaging with the Repair Café, which they did not realize was on the university campus, as a way to combat fast fashion. We received many responses on our feedback form which indicated that the event was successful, as students showed interest in both getting more involved in the iGEM competition and connecting with the Repair Café in the future. The ReneWool team would like to extend their gratitude to the HECOL Repair Café for partnering with us for this event!