Team:MichiganState/Education
Science Communication
Outside of the synthetic biology community, genetic engineering remains a controversial subject. Because of this, it can be difficult for members of the general public to find reliable and straightforward information about GMOs and other aspects of synthetic biology that may affect their lives. Public uncertainty and mistrust of synthetic biology approaches caused by misinformation and the lack of easily accessible and understandable resources is detrimental to public understanding of synthetic biology, and in turn to the future of the field.
We decided to focus our science communication efforts on addressing two key areas: common knowledge gaps and common concerns. To accomplish this, we reached out to members of the community with a survey designed to identify major questions and concerns they had about genetic engineering and GMOs as well as areas where their knowledge was lacking. Many respondents expressed concerns with safety and regulation of GM products. We also found there to be a general lack of knowledge regarding applications for genetic engineering outside of crops. Nearly half of all respondents also felt that information about GMOs was not easily accessible.
Based on survey results and information gleaned from the literature, we (alongside our collaborators) generated a list of topics we believed would be most beneficial to support our aim of increasing accessibility to informative resources about GMOs and synthetic biology. Videos created on our channel included the following topics:
- Techniques involved in producing GM products (including genome editing)
- Safety and regulations (including biocontainment systems and governmental regulations on SynBio research and applications)
- Social issues related to synthetic biology
- Production and applications of GMOs (with a particular focus on issues identified by our survey)
Each video on the channel is followed by a quiz checking for understanding and an extensive list of references and resources for those looking for reliable sources to learn more. With our collaborators, we distributed the resources we produced to high school teachers and administrators.
MichiganState collaborated with members of the Cornell, OhioState, Purdue, UMaryland, and William and Mary iGEM teams on our Science Communication effort. See more details on our Collaboration page for details!
Videos
Below are a few of the videos we took the lead in creating while collaborating with other participating universities. Check out our YouTube channel for playlists with all our video content.