Team:Concordia/Outreach

• 
• OUR TEAM
  • Team Members
  • Attributions
  • Contact Us
• PROJECT
  • Description
  • Lactococcus Lactis
  • Scaffold
  • Food Intolerances
  • Prototype Pathway
• RESULTS
  • Results of Cloning
  • Results of Testing
  • Future Work
• WET LAB
  • Notebook
• PARTS
  • Team Parts
• POLICIES
  • Human Practices
  • Outreach
  • Collaborations
  • Safety

Outreach

As our project is ultimately envisioned as a consumable product, it is extremely important to properly address public perception of the safety of GMOs.

Our main approach to this issue was through our education and public engagement initiative, which involved giving presentations related to synthetic biology at various local community events. The largest of these was Montreal’s International Startup Festival’s Family Day, a festival where start-ups, including many biotech companies, could demonstrate their products and services. The Family Day is a one-day festival event which invites the public to visit the festival grounds with their children free of charge, to learn about the participating new startups and take part in their specially-planned family-oriented workshops and demonstrations. Many families and members of the general public attended the event and our demonstration, and allowed us to openly engage such a broad audience about iGEM and science in general. As a team, we set up a booth at the event and answered questions while performing experimental demonstrations throughout the day.

Our demonstration involved extracting the DNA from strawberries using everyday household products. We particularly chose to guide attendees through performing this simple experiment themselves to pique the interest of the attending children and parents in science and the “fun” experiments it entails. As many families with young children attended the event, it was important to showcase an accessible, easy-to-understand aspect of molecular biology. As we explained the experimental steps, we also gave a short and simple explanation of various biological concepts related to DNA extraction. The strawberry workshop successfully attracted the attention of kids and parents alike, the latter of whom we were able to further explain our actual project idea and the field of synthetic biology. Many such parents questioned us about biology, iGEM, and GMOs.

As relevant to iGEM and in particular our Scaffococcus project, we were able to explicitly answer questions regarding GMOs, and their safety when used in consumable products. We especially explained how our organism of choice (Lactococcus lactis) has GRAS certification, is already found in food products, such as yogurt; and is a naturally-occurring part of the human microbiome. We also discussed advances that have already occurred as a result of genetically engineered foods, such as increased nutrient density, and how our idea is a natural extension of work already done in the field. We strived for our workshop attendants to depart Family Day with a greater understanding and appreciation of science and scientific concepts, especially those directly affecting the general population. We would later try to incorporate any information and concerns that arose from this public engagement into our project idea and execution.

Our participation in the International Startup Festival’s Family Day permitted us to engage and communicate with a large audience possessing no specific background in science. This type of outreach is crucial for synthetic biology as a field, as it promotes knowledge and understanding throughout the general population, and can positively influence and inform public opinion.

We also spoke about iGEM during the orientation day for new incoming Biology students. We gave a short presentation on the concept and goals of the iGEM competition as well as informing them of our project for the 2015 year. Our goal was to inform new students and professors alike about iGEM, and engaging with them in possible future participation. iGEM offers these Biology students one of the few opportunities to take part in a student-driven science-oriented competition alongside other students from all over the world, and allows them to put the theory they learn in class to practice. Being offered the chance to speak at orientation aided iGEM Concordia in reaching out to potential participants far earlier than we have in past years. This will be helpful not only for building future iGEM teams; but also to provide potential research opportunities for new students, who might not otherwise have many chances to obtain independent lab experience.

For our last measure of outreach, we were also able to reach out to the Dartmouth College community with the goal of catalyzing the setup of their own iGEM Team. One of our iGEM Members, TingLi Lorigiano, was invited as a guest speaker to introduce the students to the competition, share tips and tricks from fundraising to DIYbio, and help mentor the team for the upcoming 2015/2016 year. We are proud to have crossed the border in our community outreach campaign, and we are glad to have spread the word about iGEM to other high-profile research universities, potentially resulting in new and exciting projects in future years.

Engaging the public and encouraging conversation between scientists and lay persons are important outreach activities that may open up the erudite sciences to a larger non-scientist public, as well as improving the pursuit of scientific research by giving researchers a large resource to access when in need of ideas, critique, and funding. Certain research fields are known to evoke trepidation in facets of the public, especially the one iGEM stimulates, genetic engineering. Yet by having student iGEM teams approach and involve the greater community, iGEM will aid in fighting misinformation and barriers to scientific pursuit.