Team:UChile-OpenBio/Practices

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Human practices

In Chile, little is known about Synthetic Biology. There is only one Chilean start’up really related to this area, and universities only began to participate in iGEM in 2012.

Synthetic Biology is not taught in educational institutions, particularly in high schools, and few people know what it is even in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Chile, the most prestigious public University of the country. So how can we talk about the applications of Synthetic Biology if nobody knows what it is? How can we raise awareness with our project if people got stuck in their minds that genetically modified organisms are dangerous? How can we make people know about Synthetic Biology and trust in its technology?
To answer these questions, we developed a diffusion plan of this methodology based on three activities:
A pedagogical workshop in high schools, diffusion and participation in the design of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Chile and the development of a Synthetic Biology Platform in which participate members of several universities.

Difusion about
syntethic biology

Awareness-raising activity in high schools

Synthetic Biology is still little known in Chile but its numerous applications and its rapid development at international scale make it relevant to teach in educational institutions. Moreover, pupils are the future professionals of the country, so it is necessary to broaden young minds introducing Synthetic Biology, how it works and its collaborative vision. This would help forming responsible citizens.

The Goal

This goal, aligned with the main principles of OpenBio-UChile, drove the team to realize activities centred on Synthetic Biology in high schools, contributing at the same time to the knowledge spreading about Synthetic Biology and to strengthening the group cohesion by empowering its members.
The pedagogic activity consisted in an introduction to Synthetic Biology, a short debate about the use of genetically modified microorganisms and a workshop based on legos to applicate the concepts and principles of Synthetic Biology described during the introduction. The whole activity lasted 1h30 and all the pupils aged from 15 to 18 could participate.

Since this kind of activity was new for the high schools the team worked with, teachers helped with internal diffusion and they also invited other teachers and authorities of the institution.

The introductive activity

The introduction consisted in presenting what Synthetic Biology is, how it works, what the main engineering principles are and why the collaborative and open work is so important. To make sure all these concepts had been understood, the team organized a game in which the pupils had to find the word corresponding to the projected picture...and some sweets were given to the winners!

Activity in the Mariano de Schoenstatt high school. On the left: our team leader making guess to the pupils the key concepts explained in the previous presentation. On the right: pupils playing the game to win sweets!

Right after this game the pupils were asked what they thought about the genetic modification of living beings...and the conversation reached the topic of Super Heroes and improved human beings!

The Legos workshop

The practical activity was based on analogies between the genetic parts of biological systems and the different standardized parts of the game, as it is shown in the picture below.

Representation a genetic module (top) assembling standard pieces of legos (bottom).

Pupils had to assemble promotors, RBS, coding sequences and terminators, represented by pieces of different colours and lengths, and make the modules interact between them with pieces of wool. This way, they could represent events like activation or inhibition of a promotor and production of a protein. Activation, inhibition and production were symbolized by green, red and white threads, respectively.

Example of a representation of a genetic circuit: UV light enhances the production of lactate, which inhibits the repressor “Inh” of the module responsible for the production of the Green Fluoresent Protein (GFP). Conclusion: in the presence of UV light, GFP can be produced.

The Goal

The goal was to make the pupils collaboratively find solutions to the exposed problems, which difficulty grade increased as the workshop progressed. The workshop can be downloaded here. The team also elaborated an electronic glossary to make sure that the concepts wouldn’t be forgotten after the activity.

Girls from the high school solving the challenges of the workshop.

As it was the first time that such an activity was implemented, the team asked for students and teachers feedback, in order to improve the pedagogical material for the next collaboration with an educational institution.

This great and valuable experience taught us that young generations are very creative, so they could contribute to Synthetic Biology as much as Synthetic Biology can contribute to their personal and professional development. We also demonstrated that the complex concepts of Synthetic Biology could be explained to people who don’t have any specific knowledge about this methodology, just by finding a pedagogical support that raises interest (here, the legos). Finally, we also believe this workshop can be used, re-used, scaled up and its grade of complexity can be adapted to the course; indeed, we realized this activity for publics from 12 to 40 people and from 15 to 18 years old pupils.
If you are interested in knowing more about how the activity was received, here you can read some comments and see a video recorded at the end of the last activity. If you want to see more photos, please visit our gallery.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the two high schools we worked with, for the coordination of the activity and the opportunity they gave us to make the pupils discover this new method: Synthetic Biology. We particularly thank the diffusion of the activity on the website of the high schools. Here you can see the article written on the websites of Colegio Mariano de Schoenstatt, and Colegio La Maisonnette.

We also particularly want to thank the Chilean National Commission of Cooperation with UNESCO, which provided us its support to realize this activity through a letter (download here FALTA LINK)

Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty

Last year, for the first time, was implemented an optional course of Synthetic Biology in the Engineering Faculty, that everyone from the different Departments could take. As it was planned to open the course this year too, two members of the iGEM team decided to be part of the teaching staff, to re-design and improve the first version of the course, taking advantage of the experience gained with iGEM and including the open source philosophy.

As it was said in the introduction, the main difficulty consisted in making people know the existence of Synthetic Biology, which meant for the team making a large diffusion campaign that could reach the whole Faculty.

To do that, we used all the social networks we had and the institution diffusion channels, designing a poster and several short posts that showed the connection that synthetic biology has with Engineering. Moreover, the team organized an activity

opened to the entire Faculty, in which the teacher could talk about the course and answer the questions pupils had. The team made an introduction to Synthetic Biology with an activity very similar to the workshop realized in high schools. Even so, very few people registered the course. Twelve people came to the activity realized in the Faculty and 5 registered the course.

However we felt we were giving birth to something that could impact the Faculty, so the motivation to design the course is still intact.

Diffusion of a Synthetic Biology course in the Engineering Faculty

The teaching staff, iGEM team members and the students who came to learn more about Synthetic Biology together after the activity.

More photos of the students,working on solving the exposed challenges with legos.

Students listening to the explications of the teacher Alvaro Olivera, about the Synthetic

Synthetic Biology Platform

Considering the different projects of OpenBio-UChile, it appeared they would have more impact if they came from an organization bigger than a Faculty Organized Group. That’s why we joined an initiative launched by a professor from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, aiming to gather people from different Chilean Universities and related to Synthetic Biology into a global organization which could be a Foundation or NGO.

At the date, the organization is composed of members from three universities, the majority coming from the University of Chile since many students are part of OpenBio-UChile. This initiative was born in March, 2015 and the members met every month to define what would be the objective of the organization, its activities and the ways we could diffuse them.

During these months, we defined the mission, the vision and the business model of the organization, which are described as follows:

Mision

We are a non-lucrative, collaborative and open source organiza- tion, pioneer in promoting Synthetic Biology development in Chile to establish a continuous diffusion and education and ge- nerate tools about this technic. Centralizing information about Synthetic Biology and diffusing it through a Web platform will enable us to reach a large spectrum of Chilean society.

Vision

To convert into the most relevant organization for the Open Access to knowledge about Synthetic Biology in Chile.

Business Model

Customers

Students and teachers from every kind of educational institutions (high schools, universities, technical formation etc)
Research Centers
Public Organizations/Government
Large public (empowerment)

Value proposition

Generate, organize and distribute knowledge about Synthetic biology through public events related to science and technology and a web page in which:

all the activities are published and documented
all the protocols and methodologies are open access
all the information about SB events is uploaded
there is a friendly design which allows to easily contact the members of the organization
there is a section where customers can leave comments, visible for all the community.

Channels

OpenBioChile will communicate about its activities through several channels:

the organization’s web page
social networks: mail, facebook, twitter, etc.
scientific events
interventions in educational institution

Customer relationship

Since the organization aims to reach different kinds of customers, the relationship must be based on a close and careful listening of their necessities and the provided answers must be adequate to their preferences.

Flow of income

As the organization doesn’t dedicate its activity to the generation of a specific product, the income will mainly come from:

public funds
particular donations

Key resources

Since the organization wants to promote the development of such a new field in Chile like Synthetic Biology, its members have to obtain several key resources:

Human resources:
- One or several experts in Scientific and/or Engineering disciplines
- Professionals of the educative field
- Lawyers for legal issues
- Economy experts to lead with business issues
- Graphic Designer to develop a friendly and professional web page
- To satisfy this necessity the organization chose members whose abilities correspond to these profiles: students and teachers from three different universities, all with knowledge about Synthetic Biology, and relatives whose professional career is connected to legal and business issues.
Funding:
As the organization does not possess a productive line, it does not have access to a constant flow of income, which makes it very dependant on public funds or particular donations, so funding becomes a key issue
Internet Domain:
Since the main value and channel communication of the organization is its web page, it is absolutely necessary to count with an internet domain which supports a highly developed and professional web page.

Key activities

Workshops/Ferias SB.
Documentation and regular reports about the projects being developed.
Registration of the construction process of biological modules.
Registration of the construction process of low cost equipments.
Content generation for educational institutions related with Science and Synthetic Biology.
Outreach activities to bring SB to the large public and to raise awareness about this new field.

Key Partners

Educational Institutions.
Research Centres in Biotechnology.
Entrepreneurs (empowerment).

i. Costs Structure

The most relevant costs associated to the organization’s activities are:

The communication campaign (web page, advertising cartels for forums, scientific/technological events, etc)
Wages

Connexion with the environment

In order to identify PLA users and people interested in this new methodology, we talked with several institutions and representatives. Since the idea of our project had born talking with the Fab Lab of the University of Chile, as mentioned in the project time line (hyperlink), we presented our project to the director of the Fab Lab, who wrote us a letter of inquiry (download here ****FALTA).

We also went to talk with Andres Briceño, co-founder of the Santiago Fab Lab, to make our project cross the frontier of the University and see if there was a real need or interest for biological PLA.

There, we discovered other ways to use PLA, since in this Fab Lab they combine PLA with other biodegradable materials such as wood to make composite materials and help the technology to reach the market. Indeed, if PLA is quite used to build prototypes, product designers don’t like working with it because plastic products are not as attractive as wood products, for instance. So the idea of mixing PLA with a more “esthetical” material such as wood allows a friendly design for many objects, which makes composite PLA a good candidate for new 3D-printed products. Moreover, composite PLA can have better mechanical properties than PLA according to the material it is mixed with, and can last more than 2 years without losing its biodegradable properties, which allows a wider range of uses.

When we presented our project, Andres Briceño agreed that although costs can vary a lot according to the country of origin, it is expensive to buy PLA. He added that if we could demonstrate our fabrication process is cheaper than the current ones, the project would turn very attractive for many digital fabrication laboratories, for he gave us his support at the end of the visit, signing us another letter of inquiry (download here).

In parallel, we tried to connect our project with the environmental problematic, looking for an institutional support to evaluate the potential of biological PLA. We reached the Government through the Ministry of the Environment, which manifested its interest through a letter of inquiry (download here), in which it recognizes the importance of “the fabrication of biodegradable materials which implies fewer possible impacts on the environment”.

In order to evaluate those impacts, the positive and negatives ones, we met with Claudia Mac Lean, in charge of the Sustainability Office of the Faculty. She offered us to present our project to her pupils in the context of a Sustainable Project Workshop and to help us with an analysis of impacts through the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. And here we are.