Team:Sorbonne U Paris/Education
Science and communication
By participating in the iGEM competition, it was important for us to contribute to the sharing of scientific culture. We developed actions to build a dialogue between science and society.
We started with a forum organized by ‘Animafac’ which is a student’s association network. In march 2020 we participated in the “Focus Strasbourg” along with over fifty other associations. The purpose of the Focus was to link together associations that shared the same values of ecology and sustainable development. During two days, presentations and workshops were proposed by the different participating associations. The topics were very diverse and we were the only science association.
During this forum we first presented iGEM, then our project and finally other genetic engineering examples. Next, we conducted a debate among the participants. We conducted a debate workshop around genetic engineering and its potential ecological applications. Most of them shared the opinion that the public image of genetic manipulation was only focusing on very few examples placed behind the acronym “GMO”. They were very interested in learning more about the topic and questioned their prejudices about it. Many aspects of genetic engineering were discussed. Ethical questions were raised and divided the participants. People had very different opinions regarding how far men can go when it comes to modifying the living.
Since talking with the general public is very important and enriching for us, two members of our team conducted an interview in a student radio station. We had the opportunity to present our project to students from the city of Rouen which one of our members, Charlotte Joly, is from. The University of Rouen-Normandie doesn't have an iGEM team yet so she wanted to encourage them to form a new iGEM team. By choosing this city where the river Seine runs for the interview, we wanted to attract the auditors’ attention with local issues. It was also a way to communicate with another French city. The interview includes a presentation of the iGEM competition, of the team and a description of the project. It lasted 15 minutes and is available on our social media.
We also planned workshops in high schools to teach students about synthetic biology and an activity on water cleansing using filters for middle school children. Sadly these activities were cancelled due to the public health crisis. The lockdown encouraged us to innovate and adapt communication tools that we were not used to work with. We developed our social media by offering regular infographics on our project, "History of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, “iGEM and synthetic biology" etc. We also offered a series of short videos "1 day 1 activity" at the start of the lockdown which was in March in France. This was an opportunity to present each member of our team in an original way while entertaining our followers during this very special period and propose safe and fun activities to do inside our homes. We also ran a quiz on our Instagram. The aim was to present iGEM, our project as well as synthetic biology and make our audience participate. Every evening we asked a multiple choice question and provided the answers the next morning. Many people engaged in this quiz and we had a lot of positive feedback which was very encouraging for us.
We wrote several articles for a student scientific journal of our university called "I science therefore I am", about our project, GMOs and pesticides. We also participated in the Maastricht’s Proceedings Journal collaboration for which we wrote an overview of the successes and disasters of genetic engineering. This was a cooperative work of peer reviewing other teams' articles and ours was reviewed by the teams MI and Manipal BioMachines that we warmly thank. The aim was to ultimately develop a printed version of the best papers which were voted by the participating teams and ours got selected!
Each year, with the other Parisian teams, we organize a European Meetup. This year, with the current sanitary conditions, we had to host it virtually which allowed us to open it into a worldwide MeetUp gathering teams from all over the world, making it the “iGEM Worldwide Virtual Meetup hosted by Parisian teams”. During this iGEMeetParis week-end we offered different activities. There were inspiring guest talks, workshops, project presentations and a Bio-Entrepreneurship Hackathon (hosted by After iGEM). The topics covered were how to build a Synbio Startup, Biopolitics in the nuclease age: from genome to CRISPR, The MoClo (Modular Cloning System) which was presented by one of our PI, Pierre Crozet, From iGEM to Industrial Biotechnology, and a throwback to the iGEM Experience.
We participated in an important national event for the scientific community which aims to make science accessible to as many people as possible: the Science Festival. Each year Sorbonne University participates in this festival by setting up a Science Village. This village brings together families and students from primary schools, middle schools, high schools and college students as well as teachers and researchers. This year, the event was offered in digital form which prompted us to innovate in the material we used.
Every evening, the program "Sciences en vue" (Science in sight) was broadcasted live on the Sorbonne University Youtube channel. We participated in the second program called "Vert Demain" (Green Tomorrow). We ran a quiz with questions related to iGEM, synthetic biology and water pollution. Thanks to an online platform, the public could give their answers on an app and we gave the right answer live right after the public answered.
On the Sorbonne University website, original content was also made available under the name of "Science en stock" (Science in stock). For this occasion, we created an online escape game called "Seine est Sauve" (Seine is Safe) where the aim of the game was to help young scientists give superpowers to an algae in order to cleanse Seine’s water. We based the game development on a comic book we created which is described below. Throughout this game, we explained to children what DNA is and the complementarity of the bases as well as gave them an introduction to microscope usage.
The Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Science and Industry museum) in Paris was also taking part in the Science Festival. During a week-end, we hosted a booth there with all the other parisians teams which allowed us to reach a very large and diverse audience. We presented our respective projects and two different workshops. Indeed, experiments were at the heart of the program so we offered scientific activities accessible to adults and children. For the first one we used a microscope connected to a projector allowing us to show pictures on a wall. This allowed us to respect the social distance imposed by the pandemic while explaining the concept of the objects invisible to the naked eye but that can be observed under a microscope. We observed the thread of fabrics and the scales on butterflies' wings. The second workshop was based on the extraction of DNA of a kiwi. The goal was to explain what DNA is and to show how to make DNA visible to the eye. This was an amazing event because we had direct interactions with the public that was participating in the experiments with us. The participants were very diverse, each presentation was different and very enriching for both parts. Adults, children, students, with or without a scientific background were all very engaging.
We had the chance to carry out a second workshop in the “Maison de la Nature et de l’Arbre” (House of nature and trees) in Meudon. This structure was created to educate the general public on environmental issues through activities and workshops. During our workshop, we offered a brief history of wastewater treatment and its function, and we developed its mechanism. Then the participants tried to purify ‘dirty’ water using different homemade filters (coffee filters, cotton, tissues and a strainer). Lastly, we offered a microscope presentation, during which we taught the use of a microscope to each participant and offered them different plates to observe, such as our beloved chassis,
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
We would like to point out that during these two face-to-face events, social distancing was respected in order to guarantee the safety of all.
During this last workshop, we offered to the participants a printed copy of the comic that we created “Seine est Sauve” (Seine is Safe). This comic was created with the help of a graphic designer, Floki. It presents our project in a fun way for children (and adults too): young scientists give superpowers to an algae ChlamChlam (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii) in order to help her clean Seine’s water. With this comic book we give an introduction of biological terms to children.
This project was made possible thanks to the support of the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation following our participation in the “Science and Society” call for projects. We obtained a financial contribution for the "Development of fun educational tools to run awareness-raising events ».
Towards the end of the competition (late September, beginning of October) we were able to present the iGEM competition and our project to the new students of the MSc of Molecular and Cellular Biology and to those in the Management of Innovation at Sorbonne University. The aim of this intervention was to highlight the opportunity, both from a scientific and managerial point of view, to participate in such a large scale competition. It was also about explaining what synthetic biology is and highlighting all its possible applications (for the environment, health, society, etc.). Then, we also addressed the issue of project management because it is a large competition, over an entire year. It was essential for us that each person was aware not only of the opportunities that a project of this magnitude could bring and the skills that could be developed but also of the time and energy involvement.We wanted to show that this competition, although scientific, is accessible to all, and that the sharing of knowledge and science in general is part of iGEM's philosophy.
Sharing scientific culture is a major societal issue. Thanks to our communication actions, we hope to have succeeded in promoting science and encouraging debate and exchange between scientists and citizens, through varied, innovative and fun tools and also reaching a large and diverse audience.