Education

Contents

• Overview
• Harvard Future of Biology Conference
• Introduction to iGEM & Synthetic Biology Guest Lecture in MICB 325: Analysis of Microbial Genes and Genomes
• Internal Workshops
• Let’s Talk Science
• GeneSkool
• Science 101
• Simply Synbio (Blog + Video Series)
• C.O.D.E Initiative

Overview

The goal of our education and outreach initiatives is to spread the fascinating research, concepts, and techniques of synthetic biology to a broad and diverse audience. Our education efforts aimed to promote meaningful discussion of public values and science behind synthetic biology. Through a variety of collaborations and initiatives, we engaged in synthetic biology education with other professionals, primary to secondary school students, marginalized adults, and within our own UBC iGEM team.

Harvard Future of Biology Conference

Earlier this year in April, the Harvard Undergraduate OpenBio Laboratory and MIT BioMaker reached out to our team to participate as a workshop presenter at the 2024 Harvard Future of Biology Conference. This was a great educational outreach opportunity for our team to share what synthetic biology is and how genetic engineering allows scientists to develop novel technologies. The session also included several interactive components where the audience was invited to use various components of a biological logic circuit to tackle relevant issues faced by the global community.

What will be your story?

During the first section of our workshop, we focused on conveying how versatile the field of synthetic biology is and how it can be applied to nearly any area of scientific research. To engage our audience to think about how they each can employ synthetic biology for their research interests, we asked everyone to share how they believe synthetic biology can be used to build their own stories. Below is a screenshot of some of their responses, spanning from agricultural, medical, and environmental issues.

Figure 1. Entries from Workshop Participants Brainstorming Synthetic Biology Applications

What is UBC iGEM’s Story?

We then introduced the story of UBC iGEM this year — developing a DNA-based data storage platform that overcomes the challenges and drawbacks that current data storage platforms face. This was a great chance to gauge whether our project’s story is convincing for a lay audience to understand its importance and potential impacts. By the end of our session, the audience was able to understand the reason why nuCloud was developed, why nuCloud has the potential to address the challenges that large data centers are facing, and how nuCloud can be applied to meet various types of data storage demands. Several attendees stayed after the workshop session to ask us about our project, the iGEM competition, and synthetic biology as well.

Introduction to iGEM & Synthetic Biology Guest Lecture in MICB 325: Analysis of Microbial Genes and Genomes

Midway through the 2023/24 iGEM competition season, our team’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Steven Hallam, invited one of our team Co-Directors, Narjis Alhusseini, to present a mini guest lecture to the upper-level undergraduate course he had been teaching that term at UBC called MICB 325: Analysis of Microbial Genes and Genomes. During this engaging session, Narjis introduced fellow Microbiology & Immunology students to the iGEM competition, explaining its significance as the Heart of Synthetic Biology and highlighting the potential of UBC iGEM’s current and past projects to spark further competition interest within our own post-secondary institution. As a team hosted within the UBC Department of Microbiology & Immunology, we were very honoured and proud to have Narjis speak on behalf of the team and inspire more students within our department to seek such unique undergraduate research opportunities.

Figure 2. Narjis speaking at the lecture hall

Students were particularly intrigued to learn about how the iGEM competition fosters innovation and collaboration, with projects that address pressing global challenges, such as sustainability and healthcare. The lecture not only sparked curiosity about Synthetic Biology but also encouraged dialogue among students about their own ideas and aspirations in the field. Given that the course focuses on microbial genetics, there was also profound interest in learning more about iGEM’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts which only encouraged further two-way communication between the undergraduate students, Narjis, Dr. Hallam and the experienced graduate student teaching assistants contributing to the class. To further support our goal of contributing to Quality Education, we are featuring the presentation slides for download, allowing students and faculty to explore the content at their own pace. By bridging academic concepts with practical applications, we hope to inspire a new generation of scientists to shape and contribute to the dynamic world of Synthetic Biology.

Guest Lecture Slides:

Internal Workshops

Throughout the 2024 iGEM season, our team held multiple internal workshops tailored for our roster members to ensure that everyone has a thorough understanding of the design and development of our project, nuCloud. The workshops were divided into the 4 following categories, each touching on a different aspect of an iGEM project: Project Storyline & Competition Deliverables, Wet Lab Techniques, Dry Lab Techniques, and Human Practices & Public Engagement.

Project Storyline & Competition Deliverables

One of the most important aspects of an iGEM project is that it requires a coherent and convincing storyline that describes how it addresses a real-world challenge with synthetic biology; this motivated our leadership team to prepare a series of guided project brainstorming workshops to develop a holistic iGEM project. We also held internal workshops that introduced synthetic biology as an emerging scientific field, including a guest lecture from Dr. Nika Shakiba of UBC’s School of Biomedical Engineering. Once our project was chosen and its storyline was developed based on multiple rounds of internal discussions and iHP interviews, the directors prepared a ‘nuCloud’s Story’ workshop to share what our project’s finalized storyline would be.

2023-12-15: Project Brainstorming Guidelines (Facilitated by: Directors)

2024-01-30: Introduction to Synbio #1 (Facilitated by: Directors)

2024-02-13: How to Read Scientific Articles (Facilitated by: Directors)

2024-02-20: Introduction to Synbio Guest Lecture (Facilitated by: Dr. Nika Shakiba)

2024-04-02: 2023 iGEM Case Study & Judging Feedback (Facilitated by: Directors, Lucy)

2024-07-11: nuCloud’s Story (Facilitated by: Directors)

Wet Lab Techniques

A successful iGEM project requires the team to demonstrate successful synthetic biology engineering from a wet lab perspective. As our multidisciplinary team was comprised of undergraduate students from various academic backgrounds and technical skillsets, the wet lab leadership hosted a series of wet lab techniques workshop to ensure everyone is equipped with the theoretical background to execute nuCloud’s experimental plan. The workshops included basic techniques including gel electrophoresis, molecular biology, and aseptic technique. There were also nuCloud-specific skills included, such as DNA structure and synthesis methods or TdT’s functionality.

2024-03-19: DNA Structure and Synthesis (Facilitated by: Achint)

2024-05-23: Basic Wet Lab Techniques (Facilitated by: Tina)

2024-06-06: Wet Lab Techniques #2 and Gel Electrophoresis (Facilitated by: Tina)

2024-05-30: Introduction to TdT (Facilitated by: Tina)

2024-08-01: Wet Lab Troubleshooting (Facilitated by: Narjis)

Dry Lab Techniques

Going hand in hand with our wet lab plans, our dry lab leads ensured that UBC iGEM had strong dry lab integration so that our wet lab team could benefit, test and learn from both the software and hardware pipelines put together by our team’s dry lab members. One of our dry lab leads began with a workshop on version control to ensure that multiple members would be able to add content onto the wiki as the season progressed. This workshop was followed by an informative review of previous iGEM projects and how they seamlessly integrated dry lab and wet lab workflows, as well as an interactive information theory workshop to teach our members about concepts important to nuCloud.

2024-02-06: Git, GitHub, Software Component (Facilitated by: Lucy)

2024-02-27: iGEM Projects and Dry Lab Integration (Facilitated by: Dry Lab Leads)

2024-03-26: Information Theory (Facilitated by: Lucy)

Human Practices & Public Engagement

Since iHP and public engagement were such important aspects of our ethical and social goals, our human practices co-leads put together skill-based workshops to help teach our members how scientific communication differs when engaging professional, academic or lay audiences. This ensured that every member had the ability to engage with the general public at our various human practices events including educational initiatives and inclusivity seminars. The human practices leaders also hosted a workshop teaching our members about the art of iHP interviews and the methods that we use at UBC Vancouver to ensure that our human practices feedback is integrated into our project throughout the duration of the season.

2024-02-13: Scientific Communication (Facilitated by: Yejin)

2024-03-12: Professional Emails and iHP Interviews (Facilitated by: Harrison)

Let’s Talk Science

To engage youth in a variety of discussions and topics regarding synthetic biology, we reached out for a collaboration with Let’s Talk Science, an organization that provides programs and resources for educators and volunteers to improve youth education in STEM. Their programs and the workshop we planned focused on making advanced scientific concepts accessible and engaging to young learners across various educational backgrounds. We believed that through Let’s Talk Science’s extensive experience in science education combined with our UBC iGEM team’s research and practical knowledge in synthetic biology, we could spark interest in the topic of synthetic biology for students of all grades.

Hands on Synbio Activities

Through preliminary meetings with Let’s Talk Science organizers, our Human Practices Team planned a variety of hands-on activities and workshops that covered essential techniques and concepts of synthetic biology. Our goals were to increase understanding of synthetic biology and inspire students to pursue further education and careers in related STEM fields. We hope that these workshops and activities allow students to discuss and critically think about the impact of science around them. We created detailed proposal documents outlining each of our activities, which included designing genetically modified organisms, constructing plasmids, applying DNA to find criminals, and modelling CRISPR-Cas9. Our Human Practices team presented a detailed proposal to the Let’s Talk Science organizers, for which we got approval to integrate our activities into their workshop system. Our team members were properly trained and became official Let’s Talk Science volunteers, as our activities were launched to middle and secondary schools around Metro Vancouver in late April. Unfortunately, due to low interest, we were unable to visit any classrooms to carry the activities out in person. While our goals remained the same, we began working towards integrating our synthetic biology activities into the official Let’s Talk Science curriculum. One of our team members attended a conference with Let’s Talk Science establishments in other provinces across Canada, which sparked lots of interest in our synthetic biology activities. We are therefore working toward making our activities accessible to Let’s Talk Science schools nationwide and spreading synbio education across Canada with our activities as they are going to be posted to the national Let’s Talk Science workshop database.

Let’s Talk Synbio Guide:

Design your own GMO - iGEM Activity 1:

A Synbio Case Study: Find the Culprit - iGEM Activity 2:

CRISPR-Cas9 Model Building - iGEM Activity 3:

GeneSkool

To reach the audience of high school students with our educational initiative, our UBC iGEM team reached out to the coordinator of GeneSkool run by Genome BC to implement our “design your own genetically modified organism” activity. GeneSkool is a summer program run for teenagers interested in learning more about the world of genetics and genomics. Students are enrolled in a week long camp where they engage in intriguing activities surrounding DNA, genetic modification, and genetic editing. Through this collaboration, our UBC iGEM team hoped to connect young minds to new aspects of science, encourage discussion, feedback, and the development of students’ concepts in synthetic biology. We facilitated a total of three workshops, two of which were held online at Thompson Rivers University and University of Northern British Columbia, and one was in person at Capilano University. In order to collaborate with the GeneSkool BC team, UBC iGEM attended multiple meetings and online training to adapt and modify our “Design your own GMO” activity. We wanted to match the theme of the GeneSkool program this year, which was based off of the popular video game series “The Last of Us”. We were tasked with modifying our activity to one that’s outcome was to design an mRNA vaccine instead of an organism. Students were introduced to why mRNA vaccines are important, how they are produced through plasmids and synthetic biology, and how they are delivered to our bodies. Students also learned about the importance of evaluating different target proteins and its potential based on the protein’s role in pathogenesis, ability to induce an immune response, accessibility, cell wall association, and suitability. The slide deck used for the workshop can be viewed here:

Design your own mRNA Vaccine

For the activity, students were given a scenario, setting the scene for helping Dr. Carter develop an mRNA vaccine to combat a fungal infection inspired by “The Last of Us”. Students were grouped up and given different protein sequences that contained different functions. Using their critical thinking and analysis skills, students discussed amongst each other which protein would be the most helpful to Dr. Carter, while putting plasmid components together in the correct sequence. During the activity, we noticed that students were very engaged in discussion and was able to readily apply what they learned throughout the camp into analyzing the given descriptions to decide on the best protein. Students also had many great questions about how plasmids and mRNA vaccines work. We facilitated two way discussion through asking the students about which proteins and sequences they found were the most helpful for mRNA vaccine creation, and the future impacts of using synthetic biology technology.

Figure 3.1. First online workshop session at Thompson Rivers University

Figure 3.2. Second online workshop session at University of Nothern British Columbia

Figure 3.3. Third online workshop session at Capilano University

Science 101

In an attempt to expand our education initiatives to the adult population, our UBC iGEM team reached out to the coordinators at UBC Science 101 (UBC Faculty of Science). Science 101 is a three-month long, non-credit, free course offered to the residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and surrounding communities who are interested in learning about science. Our collaboration introduced synthetic biology-related techniques and concepts into one of their tutorial sessions, encouraging specific discussion and introduction to plasmid design and genetically modified organisms.

Synbio for Adults

Our Human Practices team adopted the “Design your own GMO” activity prepared for the Let’s Talk Science collaboration. As this is an introductory science course with students who have not received post-secondary education, we decreased the complexity of the topic discussed and adapted the activity to make it more suitable for an older and marginalized population. “Design your own GMO” introduces students to how genetically modified organisms are made and the important components of a plasmid; we felt that these topics were the most relevant to the techniques used in synthetic biology. At the end of our teaching session, students were grouped into teams and given a problem in the world that they would try to tackle with the GMO they designed. Some examples of the problem statements included global warming, heat waves, droughts, and ocean acidification. They were also prompted to insert the gene of interest sequence into a given DNA plasmid sequence, following the correct order of an expression vector. The slide deck used for this activity is included below.

During the session, we noticed that the adult students were very engaged in questioning and discussing the topics we introduced. Thus, even though the material may have been more challenging for them than we thought, their enthusiasm and curiosity for synthetic biology helped raise meaningful and informative discussions. Many stayed behind to chat with us about the activity content as well as how our current DNA storage project worked.

Science 101 Activity Pages:

Figure 4.1. Our HP team at the Science 101 tutorial session

Figure 4.2. Our HP team facilitating the GMO workshop

Figure 4.3. Our HP team facilitating the GMO workshop

Simply Synbio (Blog + Video Series)

Science, especially science fields that are interdisciplinary and complex such as synthetic biology, can be a hard topic to understand and can often result in avoidance. However, research and innovation from synthetic biology often invites itself to many governmental policies, healthcare practices, and technologies that communities should have a basic understanding on in order to exercise knowledgeable decision-making. Our previous team reflected on personal experiences and feedback and found that there was a lack in science communication and educational resources for students of all ages, particularly for synthetic biology. Last year, our 2023 UBC iGEM team introduced a short video series, called Simply Synbio, to “unravel the complexities of synthetic biology” in hopes to remedy this gap. The video series communicates synthetic biology concepts through a short animation and voiceover, that explains science for people of various ages and science backgrounds. The video series, which is available on YouTube and our teams’ other social media platforms, was able to create a safe space for learners of all ages and backgrounds to familiarize themselves with concepts in synthetic biology. Two way dialogue was also achieved on various platforms through comments and direct messages that created “vibrant space for questions and interactions, cultivating a dynamic and engaging learning environment” (UBC iGEM, 2023).

Simply Synbio: Video Series

As the previous UBC iGEM 2023 had hoped, our 2024 team implemented a similar video series this year, building on what the previous team has accomplished. As the previous team introduced iGEM and many other sources of foundational knowledge, we decided to center our videos this year to reflect the basics of our project. We wanted to update the series to not only show the science, but also to make our science more accessible to our end-users. In order to accurately remediate information, the videos are a combined effort from all the different sub teams of UBC iGEM: Wet Lab, Dry Lab, and Human Practices. Our Wet Lab and Dry Lab team members worked on the video transcripts to fill out the technical knowledge pertaining to our project. Human Practices then reviewed and optimized the script so that our target audience, learners of all ages and backgrounds, would be able to easily understand. Our first video, explores the fundamentals of our project - how encoding data in DNA works. Through the collaboration with our Dry Lab team, we were able to explain in simple terms, what data is, the metadata form that it’s stored in, and how we can convert data into DNA storage. We then move our series over to explain the Wet Lab basics of our project - our DNA synthesis method, specifically on our star enzyme, TdT, and a second video on Solid Phase Synthesis (SPS).

Simply Synbio: Blog and Social Media

Our 2024 Human Practices team also decided to expand on the existing initiative of “Simply Synbio” and introduced two new mediums - writing and social media (UBC iGEM 2024, 2024). Providing a variety of mediums enables different avenues to pursue synthetic biology as education and learning is a dynamic process that has many methods. Volunteer writers from the team took the time to choose, understand, and break down research articles on recent synthetic biology accomplishments. After writing and editing the blog posts, they are posted to our blog to share with our audience of curious learners. In tandem to being uploaded to the blog, a social media post on Instagram, through the handle @simplysynbio, is uploaded. The social media post is a graphic that further breaks down the blog into bite-sized pieces of information and highlights the main points in the articles. We chose to expand to a blog and focus this medium to highlight the current breakthroughs that were happening in the synthetic biology field. While most news sources do include a Science portion, we noticed that the science section is very general in that it includes all aspects of science. Our Human Practices team wanted to focus on delivering synthetic biology news specifically. Hence, our blog was introduced where we write about new advancements that actively shape our society.

Figure 5.1: Our Simply Synbio Blog Home Page

Figure 5.2: Our Simply Synbio Instagram Account

While ideating the blog initiative, we also asked ourselves where we, individually, get our news from. Our Human Practices team noticed that a lot of our members get news from social media platforms. This is reflected in the rest of the science industry as well. For example, platforms like Twitter, have become science hubs for scientists and have been crucial in the past for delivering COVID-19 related updates (Tardy, 2023). On this notion, UBC iGEM 2024’s Human Practices team decided to further our science communication efforts to the social media space, specifically through Instagram, where we felt like a lot of our peers existed. During the early stages of our blog, we also reached out to Catherine Zhu, a Masters of Journalism candidate for some guidance on how to communicate science to a lay audience. The guidance helped shaped our blog in terms of writing and how we communicate hard-to-understand topics to a variety of audiences. Some topics that we chose to write about include “Synthetic Space Yeast for Radiation Protection” and “Biosynthetic Sensors - A Synthetic Biology Tool for Environmental Protection” (UBC iGEM 2024, 2024). Through our initiative, we have amassed a humble following on our Instagram page and our posts, blogs and Instagram posts alike, have both reach thousands of people. These numbers indicate that our communication have reached people who have read, and left with more synthetic biology knowledge. We firmly believe that our Simply Synbio initiative has reached people of various science backgrounds and hopefully created a platform for individuals to further explore synthetic biology. Check out our Simply Synbio Blog: https://ubcigem.com/simplysynbio/ Check out our Simply Synbio Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/simplysynbio/

C.O.D.E Initiative

Based on previous efforts of the UBC iGEM 2023 team who started a workshop with the C.O.D.E Initiative, our iGEM 2024 team sought to reach our again to share our agar art workshop with a group of neurodivergent girls in STEM. The C.O.D.E. Initiative is non-profit organization that seeks to provide quality educational opportunities for all youth, especially those from underrepresented communities such as neurodivergent youth, and youth from Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities. We sought out this opportunity to share our STEM principles and teachings with a diverse audience, and collaborated with our Wet Lab team to provide the E. coli and agar plates for our activity. We presented the slides below highlighting the background information and safety aspects of our activity, and guided the students to draw their ideas on a template before using the E. coli to trace out their designs. Through this activity we allowed the students to explore their creative side while learning more about bacterial growth.

Figure 6.1: Agar designs by the students after incubation

Figure 6.2: Presenting the slides