Introduction: Education & Communication in “Data Security”

With the rapid development of technology and the increasing demand for data storage, the use of online platforms that require access to personal information has also increased over the past few years. However, with most of, if not all, personal information accessible online, people became more vulnerable to cyber crimes.

As data security is also one of the issues that concerns our product, we have themed this year’s education as “Data security in DNA data storage” and aimed to inform people on both DNA data storage and privacy issues. Under the theme, we have conducted a total of 12 projects, targeting different age groups ranging from elementary school students to the general public.

Topic Awareness Survey Poll

On July 30, our team conducted a public engagement survey questioning random citizens in Seoul, Korea about their knowledge and opinions on DNA storage, PCR, and Climate Change. The questions were asked in both English and Korean. Some examples were: “Do you know how data is stored?”, “Do you know that DNA can store data?”, “Do you know TFAM protein?” and “Have you heard of the term PCR before the pandemic?” The sticker surveys were done near subway stations and crowded places to gather information on the population’s knowledge of our topic, resulting in, on average, 20-30 answers per question throughout the duration of three hours.

The results indicated that only 20% of the participants were familiar with PCR and its meaning behind it (20% yes, 80% no). Although the population did think that DNA based data storage is better than digital storage (72% yes, 28% no), the people did not have basic knowledge on TFAM-protein (0% yes, 100% no) and data storage (15% yes, 85% no).

Through these public engagement surveys, we were able to gather information on how most of the population only had superficial knowledge in information related to our theme and were generally lacking awareness as throughout the entire survey, around or less than 20% of the participants responded that they knew about the topic. Thus, our team decided to expand the population’s knowledge by approaching them in a variety of different ways to ensure the maximum amount of access and engagement. Some of the platforms that we primarily decided to use to communicate our project were education webinars, pamphlets, and videos/ SNS communication. We listed down a plethora of different platforms, as each of these platforms had different target audiences and objectives, allowing our project to be spread out to a wide range of audience effectively. Along with the insight on the public’s level of knowledge, the survey also provided us with valuable insights in the prospects of our product. As 72% of the survey’s respondents answered that they thought that DNA-based data storages were better than the conventional data storage methods, our team could conclude that although the public is unaware of the exact theoretical details of our project, they understood that it is an innovative and novel technology and that it could potentially positively impact the society.

Pamphlet Development and Distribution

By means of promoting synthetic biology and our iGEM project to a wide range of audience, as we conducted the survey poll, Korea_HS created and distributed an educational pamphlet at various locations around the world.

The educational pamphlets were distributed physically on July 30th at Apgujeong Station, which is one of the most popular locations in Korea where hundreds of people use every hour. Our team purposefully chose this location so that we could obtain the maximum amount of engagement through the pamphlet distribution, thus letting more people know about our project. The pamphlet included an introduction to our team, a general definition and use of synthetic biology, information about DNA-based data storages such as the function, why our project is important, and many more details related to our project that are likely unknown to the general public. Because our pamphlet was being distributed at a location where the audience spans over a multitude of generations, races, genders, and degrees of knowledge, our team attempted to design the pamphlet and present our information in a way that would be suitable to the widest range of audience possible. Through the distribution at Apgujeong Station, our team was able to amplify the knowledge of the general public in Korea, where the field of synthetic biology and DNA-based data storage may be obscure.

All members of the Korea_HS team distributed a total of 100+ educational pamphlets at our respective schools in 4 different countries. The schools where the pamphlet was distributed at were Korea International School (Pangyo, Republic of Korea), St. Johnsbury Academy Jeju (Jeju, Republic of Korea), The Stony Brook School (New York, United States), American International School of Johannesburg (Johannesburg, South Africa), Singapore American School (Singapore, Singapore), and many more summing up to a total of 15 schools. As the members distributed the pamphlets, we conducted a 1:1 explanation session discussing the following areas: (1) Synthetic Biology and its implications, (2) DNA-based data storage, TFAM protein and their applications, and (3) what defines our project’s mechanism. As the students and the members interacted, our members were able to spark the interests of the students as we thoroughly explained our project and responded to their questions.

Synthetic Biology Summer Camp: Tomato DNA Extraction

Prior to starting educating and communicating with the public on topics regarding our product, Korea_HS decided to prepare the public with the fundamental knowledge of DNA. As the topic of DNA-based data storage is a complex topic that may be difficult for individuals to learn without prior knowledge, there was a possibility that the public could have difficulties understanding the theoretical aspects of our product even after our efforts to aid in the understanding. Thus in August, Team Korea_HS hosted a one-day virtual summer camp on Tomato DNA extraction for elementary and middle school students, where the participants were able to gain some rudimentary knowledge of DNA, a crucial feature in our project that could severely hinder the understanding of the project if completely unaware about. Prior to the camp, team Korea_HS members congregated in Korea over the summer to make a total of 40 lab kits. This lab kit consisted of all of the necessary materials and equipment, experimental gloves, tomatoes, plastic knives, and more, and to ease the experiment for young students, Korea_HS team members pre-measured, packaged, and assembled lab kits and sent them for experiments to individual homes. Participants outside of Korea had a chance to receive the kit when the members reassembled the kit to remove the tomato and carried the kit to respective regions after summer break.

The camp was conducted through a zoom call, which included live, step-by-step instruction, video tutorials with clear subtitles, and the printed procedure of the kit. The kits included a paper with a list of all materials needed for the experiment so that if they were missing anything, participants would be able to contact us for it. By doing so, we were able to broaden the scope of participants and instruct them as best as possible.

The first half of the camp was a brief introduction to synthetic biology, iGEM, and safety guidelines. The later half of the summer camp was more hands-on, in which the participants were able to conduct a mini lab by themselves. At the end of the mini lab, middle school participants and willing elementary school students had a chance to go through the steps of writing a lab report with the guidance of our team members, which primarily included a title, hypothesis, overview of the procedures, and the results. As most of the students were from local Korean schools, we conducted the session in Korean, and the information was later translated to English by Korea_HS members. The reports in both Korean and English were then sent to the participants after the camp so that they have access to the information even after the camp.

Based on the post-camp oral feedback, we were able to conclude that the webinar was a wonderful and productive experience for both the team and the children. Most of all, we were grateful for the opportunity to expand on the project last year and share about synthetic biology not only in Korea but also in countries such as Singapore, amidst COVID.

DNA Education Session at Gospel Garden School

Through the survey poll, it was brought to our attention that the general public was unaware about the theoretical and practical aspects of our project. Although a majority of the responses to our survey was completed by Koreans over the age of 20, we assumed that the younger generation will also be unaware, as synthetic biology is a generally obscure field of knowledge across all generations. Because of this, our team decided to primarily target young students around the age of 8-13 to educate as our first step to spreading the knowledge to a wider audience, widening our target audience to older students as our project progressed. In August, we visited a local school, Gospel Garden School, to host an educational session to explain our topic of DNA-based data storage and the principle behind it. Gospel Garden School is located at the heart of Diepsloot in South Africa, and is still a developing school with weak programs in many fields such as science and art. We were able to communicate with 66 students ranging from grades 3 to 5. In order to host an effective session, we visited the school prior to the actual session to understand how much background knowledge students had about synthetic biology.

The session mainly progressed based on a presentation. We first started off by explaining the basics of our topic such as the cell and DNA. This involved the explanation of nucleotide bases and also important definitions. To constantly engage the audience, we provided hands-on experience activities such as coloring in a cell, drawing a cell, and also coloring a DNA strand to better understand how nucleotide bases are paired. The templates were chosen with care to match the age of the audience and also regarding their skills sets. Furthermore, we explained the concept of binary data and also how DNA and binary data can be combined in order to form a DNA-based data storage that is more efficient than current data storage methods. For this topic, students designed their own binary image as our smiley face image that they later converted into binary data, and furthermore to a DNA sequence.

Public Communication: Magazine Publication on a Children Online Learning Community

Through the survey poll conducted by our team at the beginning of our project, it was discovered that the general topic of our project, such as synthetic biology, DNA-based data storage, and TFAM, were overall unknown to the general public. As our team priorly educated students in elementary schools via our educational session, we decided to expand our audience to older students. We selected the audience of this project as middle and high school students, and to educate the target audience, we published a magazine on ConnectStudy, an online learning community partnered with 5 United States high school institutions and a Nigerian educational non-profit, Prikkle Academy, making our information easily accessible for global students of age groups ranging from elementary to high school students. We deemed this as necessary, as younger students needed the more fundamental information explained easily through words, while the older students needed more detailed and thorough explanation that could be obtained through articles. As the magazine was a platform in which school institutions and educational organizations could easily access, we were able to successfully expand the accessibility of our project to the students. The magazine included a summarized version of the steps required to insert data in the DNA vector, information of how DNA based data storage works, and what the benefits of DNA based data storage are. Our video on DNA based data storage was also posted with the article so that people can access the information in various different ways.

All in all, the publication of the magazine article allowed us to reach out to a wider audience from different countries and age groups, and spread awareness of DNA data storage and the activities of our team.

Data Security MBTI: How Vulnerable are you to Data Theft?

To advocate for the advantages of DNA-based data storages, Korea_HS selected the topic of data security for promotion. As one of the greatest current advantage of DNA-based data storage is its ability to safely and securely store data for a prolonged period of time compared to conventional data storage methods, our team thought it was appropriate to promote the impact and significance of data security to the public so that the noteworthiness of DNA-based data storage could be conveyed by the public.

In order to advocate and spread awareness for data security, our team created a “How Vulnerable are You to Data Theft” quiz. In Korea, personality quiz, or MBTI test, is a popular trend online for participants to examine themselves and their personality and share their results to their friends. Similar to the personality quiz, our data security quiz is a personalized examination that spreads awareness and sparks conversation among peers, society, and Igemers throughout the world. The quiz contained questions asking about the online behaviors of the public that can impact online data security, such as “how often do you change your password?” or “are all your passwords the same in every website?” Participants could provide their answers through the selection of a number in a scale from 1 through 4, with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 4 being “strongly agree.”

The quiz divided the results into three different criterias: safe, need some work, and unsafe. If the participants were deemed unsafe by the pointing system on our quiz, they were redirected to a link that opened up npr educational podcasts and article titled “Your Technology Is Tracking You. Take These Steps For Better Online Privacy,” written by Laurel Wamsley in October, 2020. These educational media included topics such as password security and two-factor authentication that allowed participants to gain more knowledge in data security and what they can do to improve their security online. This quiz was distributed online through our social media, online sites, primarily targeting primary and middle school students, young audiences that are now entering the online world. We believed that, as online activities are becoming more and more prevalent in the world, early education and awareness of their situation regarding their online safety was imperative to the upcoming generation. Through the quiz, we aimed to foster discussions on online security and privacy issues between adolescents. Click here to view the quiz.

Social Engagement: Data Security Awareness TikTok

After our team essentially spread awareness of data security with the quiz, our team sought for a platform where a wide range of audience could access our contents globally. Our team understood the limitations of the quiz, as we knew that these types of quiz were not popular in all countries, not all people had access to this platform, and as we had difficulties distributing the quiz. We needed a platform where a wider range of audience across multiple countries could gain access to our contents, thus causing our team to come up with the platform TikTok. In order to spread our impact on diverse rays of social media, Korea_HS created a TikTok account that enabled us to approach our audience in a way that has been unthinkable before. Our educational videos on YouTube can be too long for some viewers, and at the same time, Instagram posts could be too short for some viewers. Thus, by having a means of communication that allowed us to share our ideas in a concise way, we created a method of communication that is both relevant and effective.

On our TikTok account, a variety of contents were posted, like “Did You Know,” wet lab videos, member introduction, and etc. One of the most well known series, “Did You Know” series allowed us to share cool facts about data security and its impact. Another popular type of videos we posted was the insight into our wet lab. In these videos, clips of the experiment processes were presented as short form content so that the audience could gain some insight to our procedure. This increased the engagement and interest to our project as the general public was generally more interested in the practical usage of scientific experiments than the theoretical aspects of synthetic biology. By showing insight in how our experiments were processed, we attempted to personalize and familiarize the concept of data security and TFAM technology which we employed throughout our experiment. Some of the steps showed in the videos were cell harvesting, DNA vector ligation, agarose gel electrophoresis, and more. Additionally, as videos recapping the past activities of the human practice team were uploaded to our account, our team could continually advertise and remind the public about the projects that our team implemented to spread awareness of our project and educate the public. Click here to visit our TikTok account.

Online Tutorial on Contemporary Technologies Regarding Data Usage and Storage

As our team continued to create content to spread awareness and promote data security, it was determined that our team needed a conclusive platform where all of our works and contents on data security could be compiled together to increase the accessibility to our contents. It was extremely difficult for the public to discover another content promoting data security after viewing a content on data security as they were spread out across a variety of platforms. To achieve this, our team created a conclusive archive promoting the importance of data security which consists of multiple online courses that educates the audience regarding various topics across the field of online security. The online courses on our archive consists of 5 videos covering the basic information about data security in DNA data storages. Each of the members have put together a presentation that contains information about data, the history of data security, data in DNA, that ultimately allowed the audience to understand the final video which specifically connects data security with DNA data storage. They also had a short quiz asking about the contents from the video, so that they could objectively see how much they understood from the videos regarding data security in DNA data storage. After assessing their understanding about the content, we have also posted the online personality quiz on the website so that people could continue engaging with the website for their understanding in data security. The finalized website was then posted on Instagram so that we could make it more accessible to the public.

Publishing the online course allowed us to educate about data security so that it will be easier for them to perceive the impacts that DNA data storages can bring to the world and them as individuals. Click here to view the online courses.

Educational Webinar on Synthetic Biology and DNA-Based Data Storage

As our team continued to educate students through educational contents and sessions, we chose to expand the audience to people who may already have prior knowledge of synthetic biology. Thus, in September, we organized an educational webinar to share information about synthetic biology and our project, DNA data storage. The webinar was opened to all students, both iGEM teams and non-igemers, interested in synthetic biology or DNA-based data storage. By hosting this webinar, our team believed that we would be able to thoroughly educate the participants who already have some knowledge of synthetic biology with precise details of our project, as it would be easier for them to understand our topic compared to the public. There were about 20 participants representing various education institutes in Korea, South Africa, Singapore, and the United States.

In this webinar, we were able to introduce synthetic biology and present our educational videos - on PCR and DNA based data storage - to viewers with varying prior knowledge on our project. These videos were around 5-minute long with photos and animations for engagement. In the PCR video, we explained what PCR is, and its mechanisms and usages. As PCR was not only a part of our experiment but also a familiar term for the public due to COVID, we were able to provide the basic information of our project as well as increase the interest of the viewers. After the PCR video, we were able to extend the basic information of our project to detailed ideas on how DNA based data storage works. In the DNA-Based Data Storage video, we explained what DNA-based data storage is and how it works, and detailed the environmental problems and limitations of conventional data storage that could be solved by the implementation of DNA. Through this video our team mainly attempted to help educate students that were unfamiliar with the topic of synthetic biology. By providing a familiar topic that they could possibly relate (PCR) we tried to make the experience personalized and memorable.

Based on the feedback we got from the participants, we published our videos on YouTube, both on our own and on the channels created for collaboration with team Empire Gene to further reach out to a wider audience. The videos were also summarized as a short so that we can effectively share the key information of our project but engage more with the public.

Spotify Podcast: DNA-Based Data Storage

As our team prepared to expand our audience to the global scale starting with the educational webinar, our team determined our next expansion to be the US. The pre-selected project was to create a podcast detailing explanations about our project on Spotify, an audio streaming platform used by hundreds of millions of people across the world. The country selection ensued to be ideal, as the US was the largest individual country that used Spotify, accounting for 65 million of the users.

Through a collaboration with team Wego_Taipei, we were able to publish a podcast about our project on Spotify. We have shared our motivation to start the project, and our project’s significance in society. We have recorded the responses to each of the questions given by team Wego_Taipei, and team Wego_Taipei has posted the podcast with the questions they recorded on Spotify. The questions included “what is your project about”, “what was your motivation to start the project” and “what is your project’s significance in society”. Through these questions, we were not only able to share our information about DNA data storage in general, but we were also able to share information on how the project developed and what makes it significant. Overall, through participating in this project, we were able to ease the access to the information on DNA-based data storage and extend the reach of our project to a global scale.

"TFAM DNA Enhancement Kit" by Korea HS

Synthetic Biology Educational Video Distribution

To expand our audience even further from the educational webinar and the podcast, our team decided to upload educational content to Korea_HS's YouTube channel. As YouTube is one of the most famous and popular video sharing social media platforms that over 2.5 billion people use, a wider audience and increased accessibility is guaranteed through the upload. Synthetic biology is an important field that is deeply rooted in our society. However, based on our survey, we realized that many are foreign to the field of synthetic biology. In response, we have created short (3-6) minute videos to help our viewers learn how synthetic biology is related to different parts of our lives. First, we made a video regarding Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), one of the most important and prevalent tools in recent years. Through animated slideshows, we defined and explained the mechanisms behind and the usages of PCR, including a detailed elaboration of the PCR testing procedure, now-commonly known for COVID-19 related usages. After establishing the knowledge of PCR and its synthetic biology related terms, we created the second educational video, which introduced our project and most importantly, how elements of synthetic biology were present in the project. This video explained what DNA-based data storage is, the steps and mechanisms behind successful storage, why it is important and increasingly-necessary in the modern-world, and how it compares to conventional data storage methods in terms of cost. We attempted to form connections between the technologies used in PCR and our project to help the viewers understand synthetic biology better. These videos were presented on many occasions including, on our YouTube channel, Korea_HS Entrepreneurship Seminar, Webinar, etc, as we believed the subject matter was relevant to all.

Click here to view the following videos: PCR, How does it work? DNA-based Data Storage

Scholastic Communication: Publication to JEI

Through the public engagement survey, we were able to perceive the lack of awareness of DNA data storage. Hence, a medium of liasing with high school student-researchers for the proliferation of leader-led promotions was necessitated. In order to increase the accessibility of the information of our project and DNA data storage, we have decided to write a paper and submit it to a journal that is easily accessible for high school students.

The Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI) is an open-access journal run by Harvard graduates that publishes original research in the biological sciences by high school students. Based on the experiments and previous research, members have put together a research paper on using TFAM in DNA data storage centers to enhance the stability of the data in DNA and are preparing to send it ton JEI. Through this experience, Korea_HS members were able to educate and spread information on DNA data storage and the potential use of TFAM in DNA data storage.

Data Security Merch: “Your Privacy Matters” USB

As the methods to promote data security were mostly done online, our team needed a method of spreading awareness where the members could interact with the public physically. To attempt to further underscore the importance of online privacy, our team created and distributed a USB, vaguely connecting to our project DNA-based data storage, that had “Your Privacy Matters” logo printed. We designed the drive so that whenever recipients use the USB, they will be reminded of their actions online. Furthermore, within each of the hard drives, educational videos about PCR and DNA-based data storages that IGEM Korea created were uploaded to once again educate the receivers on our project. As the USBs were given out for free, we made the USB and the information inside it easily accessible for the receivers, providing an incentive for people to take the USB.

We mainly created this product for those that are less inclined to watch our videos online, take our “How Vulnerable are You to Data Theft” quiz, and other educational methods that Korea_HS created. We aimed to foster curiosity on data security and DNA data storage through the USB, and motivate people to find more information on the respective topics through other educational materials created by Korea_HS and any other online resources. Not only was the USB distributed in Korean middle schools and high schools, but the USBs are also planned to be available at the IGEM Jamboree, to spread the idea to a greater population.

Conclusion

Through 12 diverse projects including offline surveys, engaging labs, and developing online platforms, we were able to spread knowledge on a novel field of DNA–based data storage, data security, and privacy. By targeting various audiences ranging from commuting workers at the subway station to gathered elementary and middle school students, we were able to engage a broad range of the general public and better educate them on synthetic biology and our project.