As a part of the DTU iGEM 2015 outreach, three eager highschool students followed the joined journey of hard work! By taking part in the meetings, working in the lab and participating in the Giant Jamboree they were given the possibility to experience working on a scientific project and to follow their interest in biotechnology. 

Our iGEM team is highly diverse in terms of age, interests and scientific experience. To push these norms and the element of teaching, we adopted three elite high school students onto our team. They all study at Bagsværd Kostskole og Gymnasium, being a collaborating partner with the DTU Systems Biology. With a background of biotechnology, they became an active part of the team. Importantly for their development, they got involved in diverse activities, such as brainstorming sessions, workshops, and technical- and practical tasks in the laboratory. Moreover, they shared their experience and knowledge about the DTU iGEM project by giving a lecture to broader audience at their school. 

Contributions, experiences and thought of reflections

The best way to understand the extent of their participation is to read their own personal accounts so we asked them before joining our team, and after a maturation period of months of intense work. They were asked: What do you want to learn by taking part in iGEM? Why do you want to participate?

"I hope to get some academic knowledge, which primarily is the reason why I want to participate. But I’m also looking forward to following the process from idea to product and to experience the atmosphere in a group of passionate people. MAJA (format this to quote). I would love to see how a research project goes from all the way from being just an idea to being realised and presented. I would also like to become much more comfortable in a lab." Thea

“As a high school student, being a part of the DTU iGEM project has been a challenging, educational, and worthwhile experience. It has given me the opportunity to become acquainted with a new field within science - synthetic biology - which is rarely given attention in school. But this project has not only taught me scientific things; it has given me a lesson that I can use in other contexts as well. I have learned that Google isn’t the answer to everything – using your brain, analysing and discussing your mistakes with team mates sometimes provides greater results. Furthermore, this project has made me even more aware of the importance of patience and perseverance while doing research – piecing pieces of knowledge together takes time and so does lab work. It has been a fun process which I’m looking forward to seeing the result of in Boston!” Maja

“Being a part of the DTU iGEM 2015 has given me insight into the field of synthetic biology from both a theoretical and practical point of view. I had a good introduction to the lab work and the methods used such as PCR, gel electrophoresis, DNA purification... After a week of practice, I followed some protocols and did experiments by myself and independently, from which I experienced the way of thinking while in the lab. In dry lab I have practised reading scientific articles and learned how to design optimized oligos for the MAGE-protocol.

Besides the biological part of iGEM I have also been introduced to fund-raising and wiki-design, which were also instructive.

Although it was tough some days, meeting early in the morning and going to the lab, I think we had a good team-working ethic and were also able to do other things and enjoy each other’s company though we are all not the same age.” Nicolai 

“For me, working with the DTU iGEM team has been a great opportunity to experience the inner workings of a research project. It has been incredibly inspiring to be able to follow the entire journey, from the original idea, through hours of work, and ending up at the finished project. Through working in the lab I've discovered new methods and gained a feeling of independence in applying them. The team have all been immensely warm, welcoming and willing to answer my many, many questions.” Thea

 

They shared also their reflections about the project after summer holidays and experience while giving a lecture to their friends and other school mates at their high school. 

"When we came back to school after the summer holidays, some of our stories fit the ones of our classmates. We, too, had spent time on beaches and with friends. But one part of our vacation stood out; the time we’d used in the lab, feverishly pipetting. We decided to do a presentation and defend our decision to spend a few weeks away from the sun.
Instead of trying to explain the larger strokes of the project to a classroom of tired high-school students, we chose to focus on a couple of smaller steps that we have been involved in. Firstly, the knockout of the mutS gene. Even though it had proved to be horribly difficult in the lab, merely explaining it was no problem. Especially since our audience were no usual high school students. They had been working closely with biotechnology since they, way back in the seventh grade, chose that as their focus. While the concepts of antibiotics and resistance markers hardly needed explaining, the method of homologous recombination was new to most. Then we turned to the more concrete of what actually goes on, in and out of the lab. Once again some methods, PCR and gel electrophoresis, were very familiar to the class, while methods like NanoDrop, MiniPREP and MAGE warranted longer explanation. The latter of which was even new to our, otherwise seasoned, teachers. Next were the dry-lab activities such as oligo modelling for optimization of MAGE protocol. We showed some of the models and explained how they could be used. To finish off our presentation, we took a second to divert our attention from the many hours in the lab and behind the computer, and showed some pictures from back when we went canoeing on Bagsværd Lake." Thea, Maja and Nicolai

“Biosensor” is a product of our dedicated passion to teach synthetic biology to all high school students in Denmark. We designed an interdisciplinary laboratory and theoretical project for high school students. The goal is to teach them, how to design and make a biosensor by combining two biobricks from the parts registry.

We tested the project with three highschool students. Together, they made three biosensors that could detect the active compound in aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid. The three biosensors produced different signals which they selected themselves. We tested GFT, YFP, and a blue chromodomain protein.

The biosensor was created in three easy steps:

1. Digestion of the two Biobricks BBa_J61051 and BBa_K592009 with different restriction enzymes generating overhangs that are makes them non-compatible for with re-ligation without the other part. (~1 hour)
2. Heat-inactivation step of restriction enzymes. (20 minutes)
3. Ligation of two biobricks  (15 minutes)
4. Transformation of chemical competent E. coli K12 strain..
5. Selection on LB agar plates containing chloramphenicol and optional acetylsalicylic acid.

Challenges

There were three main challenges with designing an iGEM project for 200 highschools in Denmark:

• The Danish Ministry of Education must pre-approve all GMO projects for high schools. According to their regulations (Danish version here), highschool students are not allowed to modify plasmids. They are allowed to work with E. coli K12 strains and transform them with antibiotic resistance plasmids and test there transformants, but they are not allowed to purify the plasmid for the purpose on re-introducing it into E. coli or modify it. This means that while Danish high schools would be allowed to receive the iGEM Parts Distribution and transform the parts into E. coli, they are not allowed to modify the plasmid.
• In addition to the regulations, materials propose a problem as not all high schools have access to standard molecular biology lab equipment such as: PCR machine, gel electrophoresis, and centrifuge.
• Last the cost of restriction enzymes, ligases, competent cells, and other reagents is a limiting factor for the possibility of high schools to engage in iGEM.

Solutions

In order to achive these solutions, we teamed up with Biotech Academy, which is a student-run non-profit organisation that provides free learning materials in biotechnology for high schools and middle schools.

• The goal is to send up to a 100 purified plasmids from the BioBrick Registry in quantities that can be used for cloning out to up to 200 highschools. By sending out selected BioBricks in enough quantities to do restriction based cloning, we would make it possible for high school students to make their own BioBrick for the first time. In addition, we ensure that the biobricks they would receive and work with are in compliance with the rules from the Ministry of Education.
• In addition, the shipment of BioBricks would also include the standard iGEM restriction enzymes (EcoRI, PstI, XbaI, and SpeI) and DNA ligase. Biotech Academy received so far 70,000 DKK from the Lundbeck Foundation for costs associated with development of the project.
• It was our goal that high schools would not be limited by lack of equipment. The project was designed so that it can be done without any special equipment. By using 3A assembly and digesting the two BioBricks with different restriction enzymes, it is possible to achieve this omitting the need to do PCR or gel extraction. Since antibiotic resistance is a concern to the Danish Ministry of Education, we designed the experiment to only contain two plasmids and one antibiotic resistance marker. We tested it and saw that in 1/2 the cases the two BioBricks were ligated correctly, when they were digested for 15 minutes at 37C.
• By prodividng the reagents for the cloning, the high schools only have to provide sterile media/agar plates. Incubation of transformants can be done at room temperature and the short duration of the heat shock can be achieved easily. For detection of BioBricks, we included chromodomain proteins which can be seen directly on the plates. Aspirin can be bought at drug stores or even synthesized by the high school students as a part of their chemistry lab. If the high schools have more advanced equipment, they can use other detection options such as enzymes or fluorescence proteins.

We submitted our blue biosensor to the registry and included on the parts page a detailed protocol for the experiment, so that other teams and high school students can make their own BioBricks. Find it here. 

Information about the project and timeline:

This project is designed in part with Biotech Academy with Pernille Myers as project developer. Biotech Academy have so fair raised 70,000 DKK (more than $10,000 to fund the project) from the Lundbeck Foundation. The project will be sent to the Ministry of Education for pre-approval and is predicted to be launched and distributed to the approx. 200 high schools in the first half of 2016.

Elements of communication to the general public has been used to educate and inspire in Synthetic Biology. Several channels of communication was set up including social media and public science papers. A key purpose by the use of social media is to demystify the team as “scary scientists” and elaborate details about the project. Postings of science and team updates attracted the attention of over 150 followers on both media outlets indicating strong interest in our progress and synthetic biology in general. Links to our Facebook and twitter page can be found on the "home" page as well as here and here respectively. In addition, the team got contacted by the Technologist and the DTU paper for a piece about the iGEM participation. The DTU paper is printed to the Technical University of Denmark and reaches out to employees, university students and high school students. The article was printed the 7th of September and can be found here. The Technologist is a website and a magazine of the EuroTech Universities Alliance, bringing together the best and most exciting research and innovation from Europe and beyond. Our article will be printed in November and we look forward to contributing to the Pan-European promotion of iGEM!

Life Science and Beyond is an annual conference organized by the Society for Biological Engineering (SBE) at Technical University of Denmark. The aim of the conference is to promote different life science activities, helping in the organisation of reasonable study plans and sharing a variety of experience between students.

The program of the event attracted over 100 curious students from Bachelor as well as Master degree programs with different biological and biotechnological backgrounds. As the event was held in the main library of the university, many other students got involved in discussions on different stands and during the final dinner.

One of the most popular stands was our iGEM stand, where our team was able to share knowledge on synthetic biology and its applications. We familiarised others with the idea of iGEM, focusing on open-sourcing, collaboration between people with different backgrounds and creating Biobricks. To increase the attraction of our stand, make people read our posters and talk to us, we prepared a quiz about the iGEM competition as well as synthetic biology with some awards! After a few hours our hands were full of correctly filled-in questionnaires!

We can say with certainty that this event was a success, as many of the participants showed great enthusiasm and interest in joining the next iGEM 2016 competition as well as focusing on topics related to synthetic biology during their studies.

After a lot of work our team has been accepted as an official Blue Dot Project at the Technical University of Denmark. This gesture infers that our university recognize the efforts, we, students put into the iGEM competition. This benefit the outreach potential of the iGEM idea to fellow students and raise awareness in the academic landscape. The increased focus on the iGEM competition promote the interest in participation increasing the academic level of selected participants of future teams.

“The name ’Blue Dot’ refers to the Earth, which - although it is huge - looks like a small blue dot when viewed from space. While big ideas can appear simple and tangible when seen from the outside, from the inside they are often rather intricate and complex. The name ’Blue Dot’ thus also refers to an engineer’s ability to remain focues and see the big picture while simultaneously delving into the details in order to solve problems and challenges.” DTU official site

Our titel can be found on the official Blue Dot Project website under the name DTU Biobuilders.