Team:William and Mary/Education
Education & Public Engagement
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Overview
This year, we at William & Mary iGEM aimed to engage our local Williamsburg community as well as the public in synthetic biology, with special focus on COVID-19 related research conducted by synthetic biologists. We provided educational experiences such as open labs and presentations to middle school students, high school students, and incoming college freshmen in the William & Mary and greater Williamsburg communities. To engage the public in synthetic biology, we created educational media including a TikTok series and a YouTube video series. Both series highlight exciting advances and applications of synthetic biology and mathematical modeling, showcasing COVID-19-related research. Our YouTube video series, “Modeling for the Masses,” delves into COVID-19 epidemiology models, a great source of confusion throughout the pandemic, in order to explain how models produce such variable and “inaccurate” results. Finally, we provided synthetic biology educational material through our collaborations with Purdue iGEM and Pitt iGEM. Read more about our science communication projects below.
Events
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High School Open Synthetic Biology Lab
Prior to the closure of our university due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we hosted an open lab for local students from Jamestown High School that focused on synthetic biology. During this event, an annual tradition for William & Mary iGEM, we introduced advances in and techniques of molecular and synthetic biology. For example, we described the discovery of restriction enzymes and their applications within synthetic biology, including the isolation of the insulin gene and its recombinant use in bacteria. Afterwards, we allowed students to conduct their own restriction digest, where they varied experimental conditions such as reaction temperature and duration to explore the specificity of enzymes. Students visualized the results of their digest via gel electrophoresis, observing incomplete cutting for experiments where conditions were not optimal for the restriction enzymes used. We discussed how enzymes could be incorporated into novel circuits and devices and how this technology could address global problems.
After the closure of William & Mary’s campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we hosted educational events online via Zoom.
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Camp Launch: Introducing Synthetic Biology to Middle School Students
On July 18, 2020, we delivered a virtual presentation to students enrolled in the Camp Launch program. Camp Launch is a summer program for about 80 middle school students from high needs schools in the 7th and 8th grade who are interested in STEM careers and opportunities. We introduced the campers to the field of synthetic biology, including the work of synthetic biologists to address the COVID-19 pandemic. In our presentation, we started by introducing some of the basics of molecular biology and gave a general overview of iGEM. Following this, we gave an explanation of synthetic biology and presented on the different therapeutics and diagnostic tools being developed by synthetic biologists to counter COVID-19 such as color-changing masks and vaccines. Afterwards, we described our project to create an antiviral probiotic and discussed our investigation of recombination detection programs before answering questions from the campers. Our presentation aimed to introduce the campers to exciting careers in synthetic biology, and showcase work that has been accomplished in the field.
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PLUS-S (Preparing for Life as an Undergrad Science Student)
On July 24, 2020, we delivered a presentation and engaged (via zoom) in a lively discussion with incoming undergraduate students enrolled in the PLUS-S program at our university. PLUS-S (Preparing for Life as an Undergraduate Science Student) is a summer program for incoming freshmen from members of groups underrepresented in STEM fields or first generation families interested in pursuing a STEM education. We briefly described the field of synthetic biology and the iGEM competition before presenting our iGEM project for this year. The students asked many important questions regarding our project: will you be able to test the probiotic? If not, how can you demonstrate that it works? If PUFAs inactivate the virus, will the body still be able to develop immunity to that virus? When would the probiotic be administered? Would it be administered prophylactically? What would occur if the probiotic is administered “too late”? These questions provided us with insight on the concerns of future patients and stakeholders. We incorporated these concerns into the design and proposed implementation of our project. Read more on our implementation and human practices pages. We were very pleased that we were able to introduce this engaged group of students to the field of synthetic biology.
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Virtual William & Mary Alumni Syn Bio Presentation
This year, members of our team presented for a group of William and Mary alumni as part of a virtual “Faculty Q&A” event held by the W&M Cohen Career Center. Sixty alumni registered in advance to attend the presentation. Our presentation, titled “The Innovation of W&M iGEM: Applying Synthetic Biology to COVID-19,” gave an introduction to synthetic biology and iGEM, and then gave an overview of several aspects of our project this year, including the design and modeling of our “smart” probiotic, our investigation of recombination detection programs and their relevance to future pandemics, and the “Modeling for the Masses” video series that we developed this year. We presented to a group with a wide range of professional and academic backgrounds and ended our presentation by taking questions from the audience. We successfully met our goal of introducing the potential of the field of synthetic biology to a diverse audience.
Educational Material and Media
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Modeling for the Masses
With the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that there is a strong need for resources to explain what is going on with COVID-19 epidemiological modeling. To address this need, we created Modeling for the Masses. Modeling for the Masses is a four part video series that addresses what models are used for, how they work, why they are not always accurate, and how to interpret results from models. The four videos are as follows:
Part I: Why Model Infections Disease, specifically COVID-19?
In this video, we start with a brief introduction where we state and discuss the issue at hand: the fact that so many COVID-19 models ended up being wrong, contradictory with one another, or both. We then provide an overview of the video series, briefly mentioning what each part will cover.
Next, we move on to discuss why modeling COVID-19 is an important undertaking. We talk about how models are used to predict important aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, including models that seek to predict: the number of future infections / deaths, how public responses will shape the pandemic, the costs to the healthcare system, and how to allocate medical equipment, such as ventilators and PPE.
Part II: How do COVID-19 Models Work?
Part II serves to inform the public about how exactly COVID-19 models work. Specifically, we delve into how statistical and compartmental models work. We make sure to keep the videos approachable enough so that the video will be understandable to a general audience, but still very informative.
Part III: Limitations and Evolution of COVID-19 Modeling
In part III of Modeling for the Masses we discuss the factors that cause inaccuracies in the modeling of COVID-19. We delve into limitations such as: early models requiring many parameters to be estimated from limited and error-prone datasets, how our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 has changed over time and how that has caused certain inaccuracies, the fact that many parameters are context-dependent and lead to initial models for outbreaks in new countries or regions being inaccurate, and how models being either too simple or too complex lead to error.
We end the video by reminding the audience that while all models will never be completely accurate, what matters is that they are reflective enough of the world so that they can be used to increase our understanding of the present, and allow for predictions of the future to be made.
Part IV: How to Critically Evaluate and Understand COVID-19 Models
Our final video in the series is part IV. Here we provide the audience guidance on how to critically evaluate and better understand results from COVID-19 models that they may encounter in the news and on social media. Additionally, we end the video with a conclusion for the Modeling for the Masses series where we briefly recap what we have covered in all four parts, and end with further discussion on how models will play a critical role in continuing to manage SARS-CoV-2, and other future infectious diseases.
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TikTok series
Video 1 - “Meet the Team”
A video introducing the members of our 2020 iGEM team by having each member answer the question: “What is your favorite organelle?”
Video 2 - “Synthetic Biology and COVID-19”
A video giving a brief introduction to synthetic biology and some of the diagnostic tools and therapeutics that synthetic biologists at the Wyss Institute are currently developing to counter COVID-19, including color-changing masks that can detect the presence of an infection by SARS-CoV-2, antibodies for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, vaccines and engineered probiotics.
Video 3 - “Our 2020 Project”
A video providing an overview of the design of our “sense-and-respond” probiotic and describing the antiviral activity of PUFAs.
Video 4 - “Engineered Bacteria and COVID-19”
A video describing how synthetic biologists were able to engineer bacteria to express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein for use as a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.
Video 5 - “Bacterial Transformation”
A video describing how synthetic biologists are able to transform their genetic circuits into living organisms such as bacteria.
Video 6 - “Viral Recombination”
A video describing our investigation of recombination detection programs and its relevance to future pandemics caused by viral recombination.
Our videos have over 300 views in total on our TikTok account, and over 250 views in total on our Instagram account.
References
Boettner, Benjamin. (2020, April 6). The Wyss Institute's response to COVID-19: beating back the coronavirus. https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/news-the-wyss-institutes-response-to-covid-19-beating-back-the-coronavirus/
Gibson, D. G., Young, L., Chuang, R. Y., Venter, J. C., Hutchison, C. A., 3rd, & Smith, H. O. (2009). Enzymatic assembly of DNA molecules up to several hundred kilobases. Nature methods, 6(5), 343–345. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1318
Müller C, Hardt M, Schwudke D, Neuman BW, Pleschka S, Ziebuhr J. Inhibition of Cytosolic Phospholipase A2α Impairs an Early Step of Coronavirus Replication in Cell Culture. J Virol. 2018;92(4):e01463-17. Published 2018 Jan 30. doi:10.1128/JVI.01463-17
Nandagopal, N., & Elowitz, M. B. (2011). Synthetic biology: integrated gene circuits. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6047), 1244–1248. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207084
Ren, J., Karna, S., Lee, H. et al. Artificial transformation methodologies for improving the efficiency of plasmid DNA transformation and simplifying its use. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 103, 9205–9215 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-019-10173-x
Wang, M., Fu, T., Hao, J., Li, L., Tian, M., Jin, N., Ren, L., & Li, C. (2020). A recombinant Lactobacillus plantarum strain expressing the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. International journal of biological macromolecules, 160, 736–740. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2020.05.239
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Collaborations
We also contributed to educational material through our collaborations with Purdue iGEM and Pittsburgh iGEM. We drafted a transcript for a video on promoter regions, which was posted on YouTube as part of Purdue iGEM’s molecular and synthetic biology crash course. We participated in a Spotify podcast with Pittsburgh iGEM, where we talked about our project and obstacles we faced along the way, especially communication obstacles we encountered while working remotely. In addition, we participated in TU Delft iGEM’s video collaboration in which they created a video to spread public knowledge on iGEM teams for 2020. Please visit our collaborations page to learn more.