Communication
Introduction
Education is a basic human right that comprises deep rooted learning that falls out in various forms. It shapes our identity and our engagement toward our world at each stage of our existence. Education and learning are the cornerstones of all we experience, from our physical and cognitive growth to our perception of the world, mental processes, beliefs, and identities, to the knowledge and skills we acquire to better our lives. As Nelson Mandela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world.”, it is the foundation on which we can raise people out of poverty, level inequalities, drive sustainable development and much more.
With an eye toward switching into a more sustainable future, we must reconsider our learning methods in order to develop the knowledge, skills and values that allow us all to make wise decisions meeting local, regional, national and global issues. Thereby, we could all work together to take responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a proper society empowering people of all genders, backgrounds and cultures for current and future generations. We must prepare individuals of all ages for the battle for our lives and our planet.
Inspiring Students
As today's young people and the following generations are the ones that will be confronting the consequences of unsustainable development, they are becoming increasingly active and vocal, demanding immediate and decisive changes and holding world leaders responsible, notably for addressing the climate crisis. The lifestyles of young people who are a major consumer group will have a significant impact on the sustainability trajectory of their nations. They could through various approaches emphasise the pressing gravity of sustainability challenges, empower themselves and take action for societal transformation. Therefore, empowering and engaging young people is essential.
Hence, to raise awareness about sustainable development and introduce synthetic biology, we decided to give a lecture to grade 12 science students at the "Lycée Français International" of Pondichéry in India, the second-most populous country (Figure 1). Our team wished to sensibilize students to be more responsible regarding their CO2 emissions and enlighten them about the possibility to pursue their higher studies combining engineering and biology through synthetic biology.
We planned the lecture to be an approachable presentation about climate and environmental changes, each individual's place in our planet's system, and the trail to a more sustainable and resilient prospective/outlook. Besides, our team illustrated the importance of antibiotics and the involvement of Streptomyces on their production. We also carried out a delicate introduction to the science behind our project by presenting the plasmids, restriction digests, and ligation. Finally, we discussed scientific principles and ethical concerns that our project could face. This allowed us to explain that scientific ethics enable us to prevent irresponsible science, misconduct, dishonesty, or morally questionable activities.
Figure 1: Our team interacting with students at the “Lycée Français International” of Pondichéry in India
Social media - "Did you know" series?
Social media networks have become one of the most powerful forms of communication in the modern world thanks to its simplicity and accessibility to the general audience. That’s why our team decided to share scientific knowledge, pictures and fun facts regarding our project and particularly Streptomyces, our fancy chassis. Through these platforms we were able to cultivate stronger links with other iGEM teams from all over the world and to raise awareness about the possibility of using a new chassis in the iGEM competition. It enabled us to disseminate scientific information and foster a culture of science communication across different audiences.
STREPTObook: dissemination of knowledge about the handling of Streptomyces
Streptomyces has never been used as the main chassis in the iGEM competition. We believe that one limitation may be a lack of knowledge about how to grow and handle them. While we focused on the Streptomyces genus in the STREPTObook, we think that this might actually be a common problem involving a lot of bacterial genus.
This issue may cause a loss of diversity within the chassis used by iGEM teams, while the choice of chassis is just as important as the choice of biobricks to be used in a synthetic biology project. Our goal within the GO_Paris-Saclay team this year, will be to show future iGEM teams with the example of Streptomyces, that the use of new chassis could help to advance synthetic biology.
In the STREPTObook, we intend to present you methods of using Streptomyces in the laboratory, present different strains, how to characterize them, which ones we consider to be the best chassis and why, thus allowing any iGEM and research team to carry on projects involving Streptomyces.
Chassis registry, as a new proposal for the iGEM competition
Following what we have done on the STREPTObook, we thought about how we should normalize the characterization of chassis and how to transmit our data. In synthetic biology, as much work is done on chassis as on biobricks. However, only the study of biobricks is recognised and rewarded through iGEM, while in the scientific world, the study of chassis and their optimisation is highly recognised (e.g. 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to directed evolution).
We, the GO_Paris-Saclay team, would like to add a chassis registry in iGEM. This will make it easy for all iGEM teams to choose a non-E. coli chassis to work with, depending on what they need. The use and characterisation of new chassis would push iGEM teams to work in different ways and could change the current dynamics of the competition, making it much more diverse in the execution of projects.
In order to complete such a registry, a gold standard could be added to allow teams to characterize a chassis for inclusion in the registry. However, the complete characterization of a chassis is relatively long and complicated. We therefore wondered what criteria best distinguish good from bad chassis for iGEM teams, as these will be the criteria that teams will have to rely on in order to characterize their chassis and thus effectively fill the register for future generations. We therefore asked iGEM what criteria they believed would be the most important to characterize chassis. We describe in more detail what we have done for the chassis registry on this page