Vetenskapsfestivalen - Gothenburg's citywide science fair
On the 4th of May, the city of Gothenburg opened its public space doors to science for an entire week. Different activities were proposed to the public by students, researchers and other science enthusiasts. The Chalmers-Gothenburg iGEM team was present on the first day of this festival. We had a booth where we interacted with people of all ages, demonstrating how genetic engineering works by explaining what plasmids are and how different parts can fit together to serve different purposes. Furthermore, we presented how synthetic biology can be used for different purposes and also what we intend to do in our project
Summer Science School
The Summer Science School is an event hosted by Unga Forskare (EN: Young Scientists) and sponsored by AstraZeneca and Borealis. Students from 7th to 9th grade were invited to participate in several activities like lab experiments, lessons, and study visits. The aim of the summer school was to get young students interested in science and create a community of learning.
This year, the events in Gothenburg took place from the 4th - 8th of July and 8th-12th of August. We contacted Unga Forskare about the possibility of teaching the students about synthetic biology and we were invited to participate in the event. We were given half a day on both occasions and we used that time to introduce the different tools used when working in biotechnology. We hosted a quick introduction to Benchling (a cloud-based platform to design genetic constructs) where the students were able to design their own plasmids with fluorescence proteins bound to transmembrane proteins. In addition, we presented our project and we hosted a laboratory exercise where the students experimented a little on their own by trying to extract DNA from various organic materials out in the wild, like leaves, grass and similar things.
The Transcriptome Blog
A collaborative science communication and education initiative was continued from the previous year’s Chalmers-Gothenburg iGEM teams: a blog called The Transcriptome. The blog was founded in 2020 by two iGEM teams, Lausanne from Switzerland and Gothenburg from Sweden. The aim of the blog was to write about science in multiple languages so that knowledge could reach out to as many people as possible around the globe. We, the 2022 Gothenburg and Lausanne teams, continued the collaboration this year as well. Today, the blog serves the same purpose, to educate the public about different biology topics, including synthetic biology, in multiple languages. Some examples of topics that were covered this year include bioprinting, gene drives, stem cells, and biofactories. To get a broader overview and more detailed description of our work with the blog, please visit the collaborations page.
Comic Book about Synthetic Biology
Another collaborative education initiative that we contributed to was the Synthetic Biology Mischief comic book, created by the 2022 iGEM uPatras team. The comic serves to introduce young children to synthetic biology through a fun format. For more information about this collaboration, visit the collaborations section.
Except from the Synthetic Biology Mischief comic book, in the English and Swedish translations.
School Visits
In order to share our experience with iGEM and our knowledge of synthetic biology, we organised several school visits. We visited two schools, Hvitfeldtska High School and Chalmers University of Technology. At Chalmers, we visited two classes: the first year of the Biotechnology program during their “Biotechnology: Introduction” course, and the 4th year of the same program during the “Ethics in Biotechnology” course. For the first years, we presented about synthetic biology, the concept behind the iGEM competition, what we chose to do for our project this year, and what it entailed to develop and work with the project. For the presentation in the ethics course we focused more on describing our project and future implementation of the product. This was done with a perspective of potential risks such as dual use, biosafety and biosecurity.
At Hvitfeldtska High School we presented the engineering cycle (design, build, test, learn) and how we followed it in our project. Then we had an interactive discussion about biosafety and biosecurity. We also discussed the importance of modelling and how we used it in our project. Finally, we presented our own project with some background on Schistosomiasis and the methods that we designed.
Alvin and Lucas (not in picture) on a school visit to Hvitfeldtska High School.