Team:Moscow/Education
Education and Science Communication
Overview
Since May, our team has held lectures in many different places online and offline. We began with a biology-related audience and ended up sharing knowledge on bioengineering with people who do not even believe in science! Our main goal was to acquaint people in Russia with principles of synthetic biology, talk about concerns, and the future of synbio. It’s especially important because synthetic biology develops rapidly, and it will quickly become a part of our daily life. So people in Russia need to understand the basic principles and concerns in the field.
We organised all kinds of activities to reach our audience: lectures, workshops, classes, contests and games! After careful thinking and audience analysis, our team found a unique approach to implement a synbio. We developed a browser game - BioLego GO!
Nowadays the most popular and powerful way to learn something new is via the variety of modern interactive online resources and platforms. There are many websites to recommend to both young and senior biologists, however, there are almost no biological computer games.
We understood the necessity of a new way to reach our audience - schoolkids and students that are new to synbio. After lively discussions and a variety of opinion polls, our team found a unique educational approach. We present a browser game - BioLego GO!
According to its name, it teaches the basics of genetic circuits design, uses the terms of synbio logic, has a nice and simple design, and imitates the familiar lego bricks game (associations are a great way to remember information!). Moreover, each level - each construction - when completed, provides a player with an illustrative outcome.
BioLego GO was created with Unity engine. It is available in three languages: English, Chinese, and Russian.
Our team has already demonstrated it to a broad audience at the Nauka 0+ Russian popular science festival. It is always available via the link.
It is a perfect way to teach and to learn! Just try it! Just play it!
BioLego Go
You can watch a short video preview of the game:
Scince Communication
We began inside the walls of our University and presented a lecture about synbio to biologists.
After this lecture, we changed our focus to the people who do care about biology or bioengineering but work in other fields. We wanted to share the information about projects in synbio and Haplosense because synthetic biology is not popular in our country.
Lectures
- Science Barcamp in Moscow /online
The international event has a unique format of a scientific anti-conference, first held in the USA in 2003. The goal is to unite researchers and active citizens to collaborate and to solve both the scientific community and ordinary people's problems. Our team performed with an improved version of a lecture from Biologist’s Day because now the audience had no expertise in biology. So due to the pandemic, we addressed the issues on the detection of viral diseases, in particular, coronavirus. We shared unique materials on the virus haplotypes, their mutations, and the detection methods of them. We also described the work mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas systems.
The lecture had a discussion format, so we actively communicated with the participants. Particularly, people were concerned about the part of coronavirus detection and, again, the efficiency of the methods. So further we discussed these issues very closely with the BIOCAD company.
- Geek Picnic /online
Geek picnic is a major European popular science festival dedicated to modern technology and science. The topic of the year is "The Multiverse": the theme of being in other spaces, exploring parallel realities, and immersion in different worlds. Here among the lectures of Ian MacDonald, Jan Topless, Andrey Sebrant, Alexander Panin, Andrey Linde, Robert Zubrin we held our lecture on synbio.
This festival attracts a very broad range of people: from small children to Nobel Laureates. That’s why in our lecture we revealed modern problems in biology, talked about the technologies of drug development, smart materials, virus detection, and iGEM in general. The audience reaction surprised us! People got so interested in bioengineering that they wrote us questions even a week after Geek Picnic asking about viruses, projects in synbio, and our team. This speech reached several students in biotech, which came to our next lecture asking how to join an iGEM community! We also wish to thank organizers for the opportunity to be a part of the Geek Picnic.
- NAUKA 0+ /online
NAUKA 0+ festival in Moscow is one of the world's largest social projects in the field of science popularization. Universities, museums and even schools traditionally take part in it, and among the experts and speakers are world-famous scientists.
For this event, our PI, Alexey Shaytan, gave a special lecture about the basics of synthetic biology, principles of detection methods, and his lab’s projects. A member of our team, Roman Novikov, presented Haplosense to a broad audience of people, including schoolchildren. He also mentioned the school track in iGEM and projects of iGEM school teams to engage more young students to iGEM. You can look at Roman’s lecture here.
This event was unique for us because of its interactive format. Therefore, members of our team made the game BioLego Go! BioLego GO is a kind of biological online constructor. Participants were invited to learn more about the iGEM competition and its format, learn about the international standard of BioBricks, and train logical thinking! Many festival guests have already tried this game and gave us positive feedback. We also translated this game not only from Russian to English but also to Chinese.
BioLego Go is open to play for everyone who wants!
- Permanent Representative Office of the Republic of Ingushetia /offline
- ZIL Culture Center /online
- Radio “Aurora” /online
"Aurora" is a broadcasting station mostly providing interviews and talks on political and economic issues. Aspiring to spread the information about our participation in iGEM to a broader range of Russian citizens, we participated in two radio talks. The first time, we described biology in general and focused on developments in the field. We got great feedback from the audience. People were grateful and asked different questions about genome editing concerns and safety! This motivated us to try once more!
The second time we participated with a story about iGEM and synthetic biology projects. We didn't expect the audience reaction: the most controversial opinions on the topic of bioengineering and the insulting of science and biology.
Though, we didn’t lose ourselves and shared links to the broadcast to a wider audience and people, who are experts in biology, and tried to make a discussion in the comments. As a result we got to figure out the positive and negative sides of science popularisation!
In the future, we will discuss the topic of safety in more detail as it seems the most dangerous to a wide audience.
You can watch both broadcasts here and here.
Classes and Workshops
Together with lectures, we gave classes and workshops to high school students in Russia. At this age it is essential to get acquainted with the future profession, learn about many different fields and also find out about the possibilities in various areas. We wanted to assist young people in going through this difficult path.
We started with school, which specialized in biology.
- Highlight event: Summer school “Piligrim” /offline
Our team gave two interactive offline lectures for schoolchildren at the summer biological school “Piligrim”. Our main goal was to captivate talented, enthusiastic students with bioengineering and tell them about the iGEM competition.
The first lecture took place on the 4th of August and was dedicated to the ideas of engineering biology and introduction to the iGEM competition. In addition, Marina Marchenko told the listeners about the most striking iGEM projects completed by schoolchildren in recent years to inspire students to develop their first project in biology!
The students astounded us with their proficiency in discussing complicated scientific subjects and their very urgent issue about CRISPR-Cas systems, genome editing and methods of detection.
It was our only offline event with school students, so we prepared a team game to introduce the principles of molecular biology and restriction.
The game was a prototype of the BioLego Go game. Students had to pick up the restriction sites and put them correctly in the plasmid when they had to draw the results using paper, scissors and pencils.
During the game, students successfully solved problems and presented the results of the teams' work!
On the 5th of August, we gave the second lecture. Ekaterina Kravchuk talked about modern methods for detecting viruses, making a short introduction to virology, and discussing the general principles of biosensing and possible strategies for detecting pathogens. The second half of the lecture was devoted to the project of our team. The students actively participated in the process, answered questions, and asked their own. Thanks to the help of the organizers of the summer school, we recorded the lecture.
We would like to express our gratitude to the organizers of the summer school "Piligrim" for the excellent opportunity to speak to such interested and creative children. Interacting with such an audience was a great pleasure.
Besides being educators at the Piligrim, we also collaborated on making an online platform for the school to be able to give remote lectures and projects. It is quite a time-consuming process, so we will happily continue this collaboration even after the Giant Jamboree.
Except the “Piligrim”, all of our activities were in the online format. However, it was also beneficial because we could reach more students, even outside Moscow.
School №192 “Perspective” /online
In the lectorium “Perspective” at the school №192, we told children about the wonderful world of bioengineering and our team’s work. We explained the topics of future professions, mainly about a career as a scientist. In three lectures, we considered the possibilities of school science projects, iGEM school track, conveyed the ideas of our biosensor and invited students to join our team!
These lectures were very entertaining for us because even in the online format, students vigorously participated in proposed activities and managed to ask curious questions about iGEM projects, opportunities to conduct research in school, and scientific work.
Our lectures have boosted the lecture hall’s audience, and they got new listeners and new lecturers! After these events, Nadezhda Korostyleva joined us, thanks to whom our project gained new horizons.
We hope that even more people will watch these lectures, have a look at them here.
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Further, we continued online events with school students, who have already determined their future profession and wished to learn more about it.
BioBootCamp is a team competition in biology and biotechnology for high school students. This year, bioinformatics and molecular genetics were selected as major topics of the contest. To prepare students for its final tour, BioBootCamp organized an intense week-course of lectures on a diversity of topics. As young specialists, members of our team proposed a series of lectures on selected topics. We decided to make the lessons as dynamic as we could so that students paid attention, understood, and participated actively during the whole lesson. This year we hosted lectures on:
- Designing a Genetic Biosystem: Practical Applications and International Competitions. In this lecture, we gave an overview of bioengineering and its practical applications and summarized our iGEM experience as well. Besides, Roman Novikov gave an overview of iGEM school projects. For that part, we picked studies from different fields of biology so that school students could contemplate the whole variety of areas and decide where they wanted to design research.
- Introduction to CRISPR-Cas Technologies. Alexandra Greshnova talked about the basics of CRISPR-Cas systems and their utilization in nature and in the laboratory.
- Genetic Engineering: Vector Delivery. Daria Smolyarova told students about the most popular ways of delivering genetic constructs into the cells and their advantages and disadvantages. This topic had particular significance for the students because further, they worked in a laboratory trying to grow bacterial cells. Daria challenged students at the end of the lecture to pick up the expression system for proteins with certain characteristics. After the lecture, beginner biologists could, with a little help, find the right answer!
- Phylogenetics - Theory , and Phylogenetics - Practical Application. During these lectures, students learned how to build phylogenetic trees and discovered the theory behind it. Marina Marchenko and Maria Medvedevа used examples to deliver the theory in the simplest format possible. As a practicum, girls chose to build a phylogenetic tree for coronaviruses together with students. Thus, they would know more about the pandemic situation. Afterward, students got a home task and easily performed it with help of Marina and Maria.
- Physico-chemical Methods in Biology. In this lecture, we gave an overview of the most frequently used physicochemical methods in the laboratory: differential scanning calorimetry, mass spectrometry, SAXS, SANS, and others. We clarified the physics behind methods using video format and provided students with useful literature. Opposite to our predictions, they understood everything and got engrossed by the theme. These lectures were important because students worked with proteins and their characteristics.
- Fundamentals of immunology. In the current situation with the pandemic and the vaccine's creation, the necessity to know the basics of immunology and infection increased many times. Arina Kholkina delivered a lecture about the main aspects of an immune response, T and B cells, and gave an extensive overview of the field itself. After the lecture, school students knew how to respond if they got a virus.
We did our best to prepare lectures with tasks, homework, and videos to make our lessons more engaging. We summarized our previous experience in lecture delivery from festivals to make this series as handy and easy-to-understand as possible. We updated information on detection systems and coronavirus in our lectures in accordance with the latest research articles. Therefore, students could make the most of them preparing for the contest.
During these activities, we also tried to tell school students about biology and bioengineering in regular schools.
Highlight event: School №548 /online
We hosted an online meeting with students of one of the Moscow middle and high schools about engineering biology. We prepared a lecture for students with engaging videos and questions, provided interesting cases of biologists' careers. We talked about what makes synthetic biology a real engineering field and discussed some completed projects, e.g., successful gene therapy medicines clinical trials. Remarkably, it was just an ordinary school where students do not study natural sciences deeply. Still, the participants asked many intriguing questions and proposed their points of view on what projects to complete further. We liked the audience, and we suppose that it is very important to tell young students about synbio! Watch the lecture on our youtube channel.
Performing lectures to the school students in an online format gave us an idea to create unique social media content on bioengineering for people in Russia. We used our local network VK and international Facebook to spread the concept of synbio.
After Geek Picnic,many students wanted to ask their questions about iGEM. Thanks to iGEM Ambassador Maxim Bokov we managed to give an offline lecture to meet with students from different universities in Moscow.
We talked about iGEM, projects in synbio, the current life of 2019 Moscow project "Lyme express", the team creation process and many more. The guys from the last year team are going to begin a startup. We support their project and wish them good luck!
The discussion continued after the lecture even on the street! We felt very inspired by the event and went home with hope that there will be numerous new iGEM teams in Russia next year. You can watch online stream on our Instagram @igem_moscow page.
ZIL Cultural Center has been well known since the 1930s. Many famous scientists, writers, actors, public figures performed here. Today it is a popular platform where lectures on natural science and humanities release daily.
Here, we also tried to tell the audience about the principles of virus detection and iGEM. However, this time, a general audience, which has nothing to do with science, was in our focus. During the lecture, we explained in simple words the wonders of engineering biology, viruses' life cycle and discussed how scientists and medical workers can detect them fast and precisely. These are exceptionally valuable knowledge during a pandemic, and it is essential to have a test on viruses.
We planned that this lecture would be offline, but it wasn’t. We had a live stream so more people could watch and study crucial facts about viruses. We were inspired by the audience’s reaction, and after that lecture, we decided that it is time to reach people, uninitiated in the intricacies of biology and science.
Social Media
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“Engineering biology” on vk.com (RU) and Facebook (EN)
The Engineering Biology Group aims to attract new people to the field of synbio. Posts in the group tell about the origins of bioengineering biology, modern research and projects, and the foundations of this science. We also share literature on the subject and synbio news. We have already attracted over 115 subscribers, and their number is growing every day!
Apart from that, we started to invite different people from synthetic biology to give us an interview on our youtube channel to attract new students from other Russian cities to iGEM.
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Our YouTube channel invites new participants from Russia to the iGEM competition. We share videos about our project and record video streams, talking to experts and partners. To date, we have conducted five interviews with scientists, company employees, and iGEM teams.
Our first stream was with iGEM Ambassador in Eastern Europe, Maxim Bokov. We talked about the concept of the competition and mentioned the team's project last year. The most prominent stream was with Lira Nigmatullina, a volunteer of the international company ISPE and senior consultant of CSV in the PQE Group. Lira received a PhD in Germany, and she told us about her experience in the pharmaceutical industry in science and business on the stream. Have a look!
Conclusion
To sum up, it would be great if words “synthetic biology” will become widely used in our country along with technologies that are provided by synbio implementations. We hope that soon enough, people will tell each other stories about synthetic biology, and more iGEM teams will gather next year in Russia.