During our first brainstorming sessions, all our members were truly excited about what our project will be. Will we cure patient from a growing infectious disease that is spreading and devastating the world? Will we contribute to the cheap production of a medicine for a third-world country? Or maybe will we create an engineered organism that would allow to reduce carbon footprint worldwide?

By going through the many projects from the previous iGEM competitors we realized something: all those ideas were truly brilliant however, almost none of them could be implemented in the real world, and therefore could solve the problems mentioned above. Why? Why can’t these works be used now that they have been developed?

Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go until synthetic engineered organisms could be used due to two main restrictions: the first one is the real risk related to the technology while the second is based on people’s beliefs and fears which are often more based on some propaganda than on facts.

As scientists, we are aware that the technology we are using and developing may be deviated from its original purpose or could be misused. Our aim is not to force people into thinking that synthetic biology may solve all our problems, we want people to have a real understanding of the many possibilities and innovations that can come with this field, both good and bad. Which lead us to the following statement:

Okay, there may be an issue… but how big is it?

In order to identify how close to reality our first impression was, we used Google Trends as an analytical tool for our investigations. Using key words and research request archives from the famous searching engine, this tool generates time line graphs by representing the amount of request in which the given key word has been used on different period of time. The reference used as 100 is the highest volume of request recorded for a defined keyword. We first evaluated the use of the key word “Synthetic Biology".

The largest volume of request including “Synthetic Biology” was reach in May 2010, which seems quite normal as headlines all over the world were dedicated to J.Craig Venter’s latest achievement, with attracting titles such as “and man created life”. The normal amount of research therefore seems to be around ¼ of this highest performance. About the geographical repartition of the volume of request, UK owns the first step of the podium, followed closely by the US and further by Canada, Germany, India, France and Japan.

The 100 percent reference point may be a little subjective, we therefore decided to put it in perspective by comparing it to other key words. As an example, the key word “biological engineering” is more used in China than anywhere in the world. In addition, it has been REALLY more often requested than “synthetic biology” despite a loss of popularity since 2004.

What would happen if we compare those words to the key word GMO?

The graph is speaking by itself as we can see that there is far less research about biological engineering and synthetic biology than GMO! In France, GMOs are a real topic of concerns as people tend to be reluctant about genetically modified organisms that they assumed to be dangerous. If these data do not show if the global opinion on GMO is negative, it however underline an interest or a concern in the area, and that most people do not seem to be willing to go deeper by understanding more about the technology behind modified organisms.
So people seems to care about GMOs, but how much?

Well, far less than they care about Batman.
In our perspective, if it’s a right to have access to knowledge, it is our duty to be well informed when talking about such cutting-edge technologies. However, scientific articles do not aim citizens in general, and a lot of media, willing to facilitate the comprehension of those breakthrough, failed to keep them scientifically true and objective by preserving their context. We have then decided to take a look at the free, reliable, and emerging source of knowledge.

So… What are the free resources available to become more aware of synthetic biology?!

From beginners to advanced level biologists: MOOC!

MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Classrooms, what does it mean? Well, that you can take online classes on almost every topics that come to your mind! Advantages of MOOC: first, it is online and just an internet-connection is required for attending the class. You can work in the morning or late at night: it is up to you! These classes can also fit the various learning style of students: if you have trouble learning alone, the community will be there to help you, but you can also learn totally on your own. Many MOOC provided are free but you can still pay in order to get a verified certificate of accomplishment, therefore, knowledge and courses from prestigious university are now open to anyone.

Nevertheless, it is important to consider that if subtitles in your own language may be available, most of classes are registered in English, which may be a limitation for some people.
Let’s make a quick review of the major MOOC platforms and their offer in biology and especially synthetic biology classes!

Coursera.org
With a large offer of free classes, Coursera is a great place to start learning about biology and synbio.
When looking for synthetic biology classes, Coursera proposes 3 specializations which are specific cursus in which you follow different courses on a topic leading to a validate certificate. However, if you do not want to pay you can still access the class for free. The specializations are the following:

Systems biology, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which include 5 courses to cover the overall specialization, from mathematical modeling to experimental system biology.
Bioinformatics is taught by the University of California, San Diego, through 6 courses covering hidden message in DNA, evolution and big data in biology.
Genomic data sciences from Johns Hopkins University which is providing a solid background on data sciences applied to biology through 7 courses from Python, Statistics to Algorithms. In addition, you can also find basic biology or bioinformatics lessons as well as other classes such as Engineering Life: Synbio, Bioethics & Public Policy; Experimental genomic sciences, Epigenomics; Neurosciences or Plant Biology!

EdX.org
With some of the best universities in the world, this platform is providing many courses on biology from beginners to advanced levels. Some noteworthy classes proposed here have been provided by the MIT and Harvard, from “Introduction to biology” to “Principles of Synthetic Biology”. Other broader topics are available such as “Lab Safety: The Interactive Game of Don’t Endanger the Owls” (Rice University) or “Science at the Polls: Biology for Voters”, whose aim is to provide every citizens with the basic knowledge required to be an aware voters (University of Berkeley).

Making an exhaustive list of all the biology courses available online would be an endless task as each month new courses are available while some are removed. Do not hesitate to look for platform specific to your country or field of research: for instance, OpenClassroom and Udacity for computer sciences, Canvas, France-universite-numerique, NovoEd, OpenMooc and plenty of others can be found!

For those who are not willing to follow a full class on a topic but still want to improve their understanding of science and other ethical matters, TED is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote “ideas worth spreading”. By organizing TEDtalks conferences that are freely available online, this organization is contributing to the popularization of many topics from science, psychology, new technology or global actualities. Speakers are often talking about biotechnology and we invite anyone interested in synbio to check out Craig Ventertalks among others really interesting contents!

Social networks for synthetic biology popularization and development

How can we talk about free, open content, without talking about social network? If some websites and Youtube Channel are already providing a great popularization work such as ASAP Science, IFLS (among others) it is also possible for both beginners and long-term scientists to use social network to learn about the actuality of their field, to get in touch with others and to debate about new ideas. In this perspective, the website Quora is allowing people to ask questions and to receive answers from the world experts on the topic! The scientific community is especially active on this site and is dedicated to explain through constructed argumentations all the concepts you have ever wondering about.

Twitter can also be a great tool in order to get in touch with scientists and companies and debate! The #DistractiglySexy hashtag is a perfect example of how a social media can be used to convey a message and bring to knowledge some concerns that would have remained unknown without it. It is also a great way to follow the news, learning about recent discoveries or events. For those of you, who are not familiar with Twitter, our team have conducted a short study using recent analytical tools to identify the main actors you should follow to be informed about #synbio !

Here is a screenshot of the social network analysis we carried out using the software NodeXL and SocNetV! Some of the more active actors on #synbio for the last 10 000 tweets using this hashtag have been @Synthsysed, @Synbiobeta, @Seqcomplete, @DrTomEllis, @biobasedchem, @amyelizatayler, @biochemphd, @bioSYNergy_dk , @Caiyizi, @PortlandPress, @ChainBiotech, @KerrLorraine, @Synberc, @kunjapur among others !
Don’t hesitate to keep you up to date by following them.

Open Science, Responsible Innovation, Big Data and Open access: What are those trends and why should you care?

Either you are a scientist or not, you may not have heard about those terms before but you definitely will in the future. Open science is a movement whose aims are to increase transparency of research, increase its public availability and accessibility through open access and open data, and to promote scientific collaborations in order for anyone to have the tools to contribute to scientific progress.

Sounds familiar? The iGEM competition is a great example of open science. By using the BioBrick standards, everyone is working in the same way which increases the potential of scientific cooperation. In addition, as the registry is an open-source BioBrick library, anyone can share their work and improve previous constructions in order to make synthetic biology go forward. Open Science is spreading in other fields as well and is heading to the development of a new paradigm in research but also in the industry with the rise of “open innovation”. The research and innovation of tomorrow will be cooperative and based on win-win partnership which is why you better be aware of this movement!

The research and innovations of tomorrow are also expected to meet criteria of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI). As global awareness is rising, new products and services will be more and more judged on their social and environmental impact. Innovation strategy will have to adapt, from up-to-bottom to bottom-up strategies, by increasing the contributions of end-users, employees and all individuals on the innovation process. Synthetic biology is not an exception and is even more subjected to RRI as the development of the field is highlighting ethical dilemma by questioning the definition of living organisms, their use as a micro-plant to produce product for our own interest, and the potential misused of the technology.

Moreover, with the rise of big data, ownership and collection of biological data are likely to be hot topics in a close future as laws and regulations are not up to date with the potential issues to come.
Thus, it is fundamental that people get informed to make an informed decision on what they want, and the only way to prepare them, to treat the source of the problem, is to provide them education through popularization and open science!

Our purpose: Raising awareness by providing tools for a better understanding of synthetic biology

As we demonstrated it, in our digital area, education, through MOOC and open access are more easily available than ever. Nevertheless, people still have to develop interest in a topic in order to reach information, sometimes overcoming language barriers and finding information that remains both scientifically correct and understandable!
Our purpose during the overall competition has been to bring people to understand the field, its risks and opportunities and to invite them to develop their own opinion. This objective in our mind, we chose to develop our project through different supports and strategies.

Combining gamification and popularization into effective teaching strategies

What is gamification?

Gamification is a recent term describing the use of game-like designs and mechanisms in order to facilitate the understanding of non-fun topic, to motivate and engage people in theirs tasks. Why learning should not been amusing? Well, our team was pretty sure it should be, which lead us to develop our Bio-Console and Mobile application!

Our Bio-Console

According to our purpose, choosing a bio-console as a support for our project was a perfect fit! Microfluidics is nowadays of a great importance thanks to its many applications from diagnosis to single-cell analysis. Thus, combining this high-tech support to a game seems great to get people interested in the potential application of such systems. In addition, we could get them more sensitive about safety issues thanks to our kill-switch and make them discover the great possibilities of optogenetics. Still, our main objective was to ensure that our system would be safe of use by two kinds of “game over” to make sure no spreading would occur when using the console.

However, some ethical concerns were raised from our choice: should we “play” with living organisms like in our game? We debated this problematic and came to the conclusion that making bacteria a playful companion in a game of fluid and light would not harm neither the organisms, neither environment nor human beings. In addition, the Bio-Console is not expected to be an industrial scale project and the demonstration of the microfluidic device does not necessarily require the use of bacteria to reach its popularization purpose.

Our Mobile Application

Available on Android systems and respecting the open source philosophy of the iGEM, our mobile application development has been conducted in order to create an educational but still fun game in order to make people of any background more likely to get informed about biotechnology and synthetic biology. As we needed to make choices between our many ideas of mini-games, we have chosen to focus our first mini-games on safety issues and good lab practices and to introduce our bacterial hero! As this project represents on itself a huge amount of intellectual, material and time implication of all of our team, and as we didn't realize all the mini-games we wanted to design, we want our mobile application to be transmitted and updated every year for the iGEM competition by the next IONIS iGEM teams.

Challenging others

What a better way to get people to question a topic than by challenging them?

• Challenging iGEMers: popularization is not an easy task which is why we ask our fellow iGEMers to explain their project in a less than one minute video!
• Challenging Biotechnology Students: After presenting the iGEM and synthetic biology to 1st year biotechnology students we challenged them to imagine a project in less than 30 min in a friendly competition after which they presented their idea in front of their classmates who were encouraged to question the idea on every area from ethic to biosafety and possible road-to-market issues.
• Increasing Curiosity for Science in Primary and High Schools: Members of our team have presented biology and more generally Science to primary school pupils. They also presented synthetic biology and human genetics to High School students. Those presentations were both rewarding for the class as well as our team: children and students were really excited and curious about the topic, and it was truly fulfilling to teach them during those sessions and turning on a sparkle of interest which may lead to a real passion for science!

Building a safer project to contribute to the industrial use of synthetic biology

Another aspect of our project was to bring scientists a tool to make their project safer: the kill-switch triggered by light we aimed to design would allow other projects to be conducted in a controlled and closed environment, by preventing any spreading out of the bioreactor in which bacteria would be kept for instance. However, to ensure the safety of our system, test on the rapidity of the death activation after light exposure should be performed and modeled before being used in industrial conditions. Biosafety should be a fundamental part of synthetic biology research and we hope our contributions to the iGEM competition will both help future teams but also encourage them to think about their own way to develop safer experimentations that could lead one step toward industrial use of synbio!

Final words

To conclude, our team believe scientists and citizens must work together because ethical and environmental issues related to synthetic biology are concerning everyone. Everybody should be able to understand the main principles of this field and it is with a great enthusiasm that we use the gamification and digital trends in order to promote popularization both to scientists and non-scientists of all ages.

Through our online investigations, our Bio-Console and Application, our aim was to empower citizens by giving them the knowledge they need to build an aware opinion and to encourage them to take part in the future of science by questioning themselves. Indeed, this matter will be of great importance, especially when new laws and regulations will be debated. By working on a kill-switch triggered by light, we also hope synthetic biology projects would be safer and could be used more commonly in closed bioreactor, preventing any spreading but allowing society and people to benefit of the many solutions made possible by genetic engineering.