CellulALT is the result of the work of students from diverse backgrounds in terms of age, culture, ethnicity, and education. It was important to us from the very beginning that our education and communication strategies and efforts reflected our values. Therefore, we aim to deliver information and education through different means, and to different people from different social backgrounds and economic statuses. We achieved that in the following ways:
Even when English is the lingua franca of science for most of the world, national and native languages are still important for science, even in developed nations with thriving scientific research. Disseminating information about our project and other iGEM projects in various languages became of utmost importance for us to communicate the solutions that iGEM can offer effectively. Hence, we took part in not just one, but two translation groups that took part in translating infographics not only within the translation groups but also offered translation services to several other teams across the globe. Besides this, we also translated our infographic into non-English languages and translated articles.
Through various posts, we taught our followers about synthetic biology. We disseminated various infographics about current iGEM projects as well as our project. We explained complicated concepts in a way that is easily received so everyone could understand. As our team understands the importance of sharing information to promote awareness, distribute knowledge, and ensure the visibility of projects. On this basis, our team decided to take part in translation collaborations.
Translation builds bridges between different cultures and is an effective way to overcome the language barrier and generate inclusivity. Communicating and disseminating information will ensure that the research has an impact on different levels, whether it is social, political, or economical. Perhaps bringing awareness to current projects will urge visibility, comprehension, and implementation of research. Therefore, our team was happy to take part in translation collaborations with other iGEM teams which we thought was an effective way of disseminating information and reaching a wider audience.
We were looking for meaningful collaborations that reflected the diversity of our multilingual team. Based on our choice to be part of the core translation group of iGEM teams infographic into multiple languages. By joining Gems Taiwan, Team Korea HS, and Thailand RIS, which translated and disseminated iGEM infographics into our respective languages. As our team is diverse with different cultural backgrounds, we found this collaboration an important means of communicating science and ideas to different culture. The ideas or projects are based on science, facts, and a little bit of imagination that can be a stepping stone to solving world problems such as banana pandemics (the Panama Disease), or creating new sustainable ways of producing supplements. This way enhances the visibility of the projects and perhaps has a social and political impact. Our team was happy to translate infographics by various us iGEM teams into Norwegian, which were also translated into English, Mandarin, Korean, and Thai.
The transcriptome is a blog that is used as a platform to share science. The blog is the result of the collaboration between iGEM team UNIL and Chalmer-Gothenburg in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. The aim of the blog was to write about projects and interesting things in the field of synthetic biology. Primary, the blog posts were in English but have been later translated into several languages including Swedish, Portuguese, German, and Japanese Our team was approached by iGEM Team UNIL 2022 to take part in the translation of the articles in Norwegian. The following articles were translated into Norwegian:
“GMOs And Purple Tomatoes” written by Lucas Toftås and Michael Spädt.
“Vitamin A deficiency and Golden Rice” written by Leon-Samuel Icking and Emil Löfgren.
“How biotechnologies facilitate the production of insulin” written by Mehdi Naïah and Leonard Herzog.
You can find them on TheTranscriptome.com
We recorded a podcast about our work and experiences with iGEM that TEAM ITESO distributed through their Spotify account SYN Sentido episode and YouTube channel in Mexico.
Leslie Alfredsson an entrepreneur based in Malmö, Sweden that invited our team member Liza to her Podcast, “La Chisma Morning Show”, a podcast that covers various topics. We were featured on the episode “What has changed in the last month in your life”, where we talked about iGEM, our project, and synthetic biology. We introduced the concept of synthetic biology and talked about the way it is affecting our daily life from insulin production in the medical field to agriculture. With the help of the podcast, we hope we are reached and informed the listeners about the powerful technologies and their implementation that have had a tremendous impact on our daily life.
With the hope and anticipation to recruit more students from the University of Oslo to join the 2023 team, we visited various faculties in the University to present our project and what they could achieve through iGEM.
iGEM was a wonderful teaching experience for our team members. We gained new skills, knowledge, and experience that we wanted to share with other students to incent them to join UiOslo iGEM 2023. For that reason, we held presentations for students in different sections at the university to incent them to join UiOslo iGEM 2023.
The presentation was oriented toward students from all sections including Bioscience, pharmacy, chemistry, and material science. We wanted to inform prospects about what iGEM is, and to debunk the myth about iGEM being only a life science competition but rather a competition where the biggest strength lies in interdisciplinarity to solve problems. Diversity is the key as we experience that our team members all have different educational backgrounds, skills, and experiences.
Our supervisor, Kirsten Borse Haraldsen, presented iGEM for the chemistry and material science section and greatly emphasized that iGEM is into interdisciplinary and encouraged everyone to join.
We offered some kombucha tasting after our presentation and allowed for a more relaxed setting for the students to ask questions.
Tradition must continue and after three difficult years, we are planning to hold an event at The Science Library after the competition ends to present our project and tell our story. The Science Library is a space that hosts events, and a place where students from different scientific backgrounds and age groups unite to study and socialize with other students. We aim to reach out and inform them about iGEM, spread awareness about synthetic biology, and recruit possible prospects. We want to share our experience in a more relaxed environment where we will offer them cake and snacks and answer some questions in a one-to-one setting.
We had a meeting with Rein Aasland to promote and recruit a future iGEM team from the University of Bergen. During the meeting, we talked about iGEM, our experience, our struggle, and what we could have done again. We got to know about prospective supervisors and labs that can supervise future iGEM teams from Bergen. One of the questions asked during the meeting is if we were willing to support and guide the new team, to which we gladly replied yes. The meeting ended on a positive note as we were able to convince Rein to set up a further meeting between us and prospective supervisors and labs in UiB.
We were interviewed by Eivind Torgersen of Titan (a newspaper for science and technology at the University of Oslo, affiliated with the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. We talked about our project and iGEM as a whole and our interview was featured on https://titan.uio.no
UNGforsk Uke (Young Researcher’s Week) is a huge event that targets 10th graders in middle school and freshmen in high school. For over 20 years, students from Oslo and Akershus have been allowed to visit university campuses to meet scientists and students in the field of science and technology. The aim is to arouse curiosity and interest in the science subject and inspire the students with what they could also do with science. This event was held this year in September for the first time after two years, and we were happy to host the workshops held at the Institute of Biosciences at the University of Oslo.
We aimed to introduce the students to synthetic biology and shed light on the interdisciplinarity of science. We worked together with our iGEM partners iGEM team UniCAMP and we kindled their interest in science and inspired prospects to join future iGEM competitions. Through the workshop, we introduced new concepts including polymerization, monomers, and living organisms in which we can find cellulose polymers and produce them.
We started by showing the student cellulose grown in the lab and putting that in contexts with polymers. How and where to find cellulose and the type of living organisms that produces them. With that, we introduced them to the terms monomers and put carbohydrate glucose-monomers in conditions with a certain type of bacteria that utilize it to produce a polymer.
We held a science class for 5th graders in Vahl Elementary school. The visit aimed to introduce biology and engage the students in science. We wanted to hold a more simplified version of the high school experiment and demonstration for the students.
For the highest learning outcomes, we implement Bloom's taxonomy to systematically design a biology lesson that introduces new terms and concepts to students in 5th grade. The goal was to understand the experiment and be able to formulate possible hypotheses related to the experiments.
To maximize the learning outcomes, Bloom's taxonomy levels 1-5 were used. First, we started by asking students to identify what they know about the terms and concepts related to carbohydrates. Further, connect the terms to familiar objects, such as sugars, and gave examples of objects made of or containing sugars. From there we held a simple informative class regarding different carbohydrates, photosynthesis, and energy. We kept the class engaged by asking questions and giving examples. This knowledge was then applied before, during, and after conducting the experiments with kombucha and starch tests.
We handed our protocols before we started each experiment and together with the students, we formulated hypotheses for each experiment and connected the knowledge acquired during the class with the experiments. While demonstrating the kombucha experiments, we introduced the term fermentation and symbiosis with bacteria and yeast. An important aspect of learning is to let the student experience, visualize, touch, and smell, therefore we let the student touch and smell the SCOBY-pellicle. We linked the SCOBY to the polymerization process and the result of having sugars in the mixture.
In starch test experiments, students were able to test for starch content in apples, bananas, and potatoes themselves. Together with the class and their teacher, we hypothesized which fruit or vegetable contained starch. In small groups, the students tested the starch content in apples, bananas, and potatoes as well as in paper towels. We had the opportunity to talk to the students in smaller groups, clarify difficult concepts, and introduced the term synthetic biology. Finally, the teacher summarized to the class what they learned, and the experiment was conducted.
The experiments aimed to allow visualization of the effect of sugars on a living organism, besides introducing the concept of polymers which are linked to our project. Additionally linking bacterial growth is visualized by the SCOBY pellicle growth to the energy we get with food intake.
Cellulose growth game by iGEM team UniCAMP:
We collaborated with UniCamp to test their Cellulose growth game. During this collaboration, the game designed and made by UniCamp was tested and disseminated by our team. This game was tested by 10 year old kids.
Feedback from the kids:
Increasing gk will make the bacteria/green thing happy, increasing anything else will make it unhappy. Winning the game by increasing gk.
