La Maison de la Rivière
La Maison de la Rivière (literally: River’s House), is a foundation located in Tolochenaz, next to the lake Geneva and the Boiron river. This foundation has the mission to study, do research on and protect the local aquatic species. Their structure contains laboratories used for observational experiments, and a museum, where various subjects around the rivers and lakes are presented. Each year, nearly 8'000 school children visit the museum (which is a big number for Swiss standards). It is an important place where scientists, universities and citizens can exchange and learn information about biodiversity and aquatic species’ conservation. You can learn more on the webpage: https://www.maisondelariviere.ch/.
On the 26th of July, we went to the foundation. We presented our project to its co-director, Damien Robert-Charrue, and he showed us around the museum and research facility. We got introduced to their research, and our team proposed the idea of a collaboration for the next exposition in November. As we deeply care about our project, we would like to spread awareness about the economical and environmental impacts of the quagga mussels to a larger public (to both children and adults). Moreover, we chose to extend our subject to the invasive species who are living in or around the freshwater, as their number and negative impacts are increasing over time. We named this project : “Around the freshwater - the invasive species”. We started to prepare various posters of invasive species, which will be presented to teenagers and adults. Besides, we started the children’s book not only for school programs but also for the children who are visiting the exposition with their families. As Mr. Robert-Charrue explained to us during our first visit, the purpose of the exposition is to create a dialogue between the visitors, using various supports.
On the 3rd of October, we presented our posters and the children’s book (more information in the next section) to La Maison de la Rivière co-director. He was really pleased with our work.
Concerning the posters, we agreed that the better solution will be to reduce their format, given the small dimension of the museum part. We will present them as flyers and La Maison de la Rivière will use it as didactic support during awareness courses given to the public (courses that already take place in the foundation). Contrary to posters, the flyers will be more handy as visitors can take them at home and take notes on them during formations.
Concerning the children’s book, we proposed to select with La Maison de la Rivière’s team the best pages that match with the theme of their foundation. We thought of writing a smaller book than the actual, in order to make it easily accessible to kids. We suggested to Damien Robert-Charrue to print these small books and give them freely during a special one-day exposition around the theme of aquatic invasive species and he agreed to our idea.
If you are interested, you can take a look at the posters especially written for La Maison de la Rivière (note : even if you can’t read French, we are sure you can still enjoy the presentation !)
Book “Quagg’out ~ The fun is invasive! "
In the last decades our planet is facing a dramatic increase in the extinction rate of species, and one of the main contributing factors are invasive species (Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia - Specie aliene invasive - IAS (Invasive Alien Species), n.d.). As we said in the book (spoiler alert!), the extinction rate today is between 100 and 1’000 times higher than the one estimated for dinosaur mass extinction, and the increasing power of invasive species is frightening (Extinction Over Time | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, n.d.). We could just have written some articles, published some videos on YouTube and posted on social media, so why the book?
We often hear the phrase “children are our future”, and in this case it could not be more right. Awareness about problems should start at a young age, as well as passions and habits, and that is why we tried to reach out especially to kids. But taking into account the fact that kids don’t usually do things alone, this book can also reach out to parents, friends and teachers… essentially everybody. To give all the people the opportunity to read this book, we translated it in 3 languages: French, Italian and English.
Learning is often linked with school, but this book also includes games and fun activities, which is why we think it could be perfect for the free time with the family, a Wednesday afternoon with friends, or at school between a math and history class. In fact, when you have fun, learning becomes easier! A lot of kids bore themselves when they are sitting at a school desk, and we absolutely do not want this outcome. For this reason, we put together games, crosswords, pictures and drawings, and made a book out of it. Obviously, there is some reading to do…but what if the reading prepares you for a competition game with friends? And what if the reading is about animals?
Regarding the animals present in our book, we selected only a few of the thousands invasive species that exist. Maybe they are not the most dangerous, nor the ones that cause the worst problems. So, the question comes naturally… Why these species? Well, we tried to select the most diverse and fun ones: an annoying insect, one that everybody fears and one that everybody loves, two nice rodents and a bird, a soft bunny seemingly innocent, a plant that everybody sees but nobody recognizes, a strange fish and a slimy cannibal. But the last one is the most important one: the quagga mussel. Our work in this competition is about the latter, so of course it couldn’t miss the roll call.
Being a book about biology, a little learning and reading is mandatory. We choose to explain some terms that we can encounter in this field through some games, this way reading the book would be easier. In addition, if the readers want to deepen their knowledge, now they have some more means that can help.
Here you can find our book, which is available for the iGEM community and accessible to everyone. Please let us know what you think about it!
English version:
French version:
Italian version:
What is a book without a public reading it?
The goal of our work is to spread the knowledge on invasive species and biology, and of course to have fun learning this thematic. To do so, we contacted a bunch of teachers and presented our book to get advice from them. Generally, each of them appreciates our children’s book and the activities within it. The exercises correspond well to our public target, the children, and the teachers like how the book illustrates invasive species in various ways such as using crosswords and enigmas. We had a few suggestions such as integrating outdoor activities (for example: looking for Japanese knotweed, distinguishing between the Asian and local ladybugs, …). We agree that outdoor activities lead to more practical work and permits to better integrate new information than only through reading a book, but we choose not to include them for the following reason: as the outside activities depend strongly on seasons, weather and on the habitat of the studied species, we chose to leave the planning to the teachers. A second advice was to reduce the amount of information in our book, as this would be hard to implement in a biology school program. In fact, we chose many invasive species that would be interesting for children and we presented them with various exercises.
This gives to the teachers the choice about the activities and subjects that they prefer to introduce during their lessons, according to the children’s age and their available time.
We thought of visiting a school and preparing activities around invasive species with children. Unfortunately, all contacted teachers had already planned their school program and as invasive species thematic wasn’t in their planning, it would have been too difficult for them to make changes. But most of them are enthusiastic to integrate this theme in their next year’s biology lessons and will enjoy using our book as a didactical support!
We would like to thanks the following teachers and schools that took their time to read our book and give us some precious advice:
- Christel Faoro, Lausanne
- Carine Cohen, teaching in Gan Chlomo school, Lausanne
- Dominique Grandjean, teaching in ENSR “École Nouvelle de la Suisse Romande”, Lausanne
- Suzanne Lüthi, Doubs (France)
ISME
The International Society for Microbial Ecology invited us to their conference, which took place in the EPFL and Unil campus in Lausanne. On the 17th of August, we prepared a stand and a poster. We presented our project to the public and answered people's questions about synthetic biology, quagga mussels and our summer project.
Articles and Newspapers
We wanted to explore other ways to reach out to the public, so we decided to contact various magazines and newspapers.
As scientists, we have a duty to communicate about our research to the general public, this is why it was important for us to share our project. The newspapers we contacted enabled us to engage different audiences, from young to old.
Journal “Comment ça marche”
At first, we contacted the members of the team of the journal “Comment ça marche”, in order to offer them an article on the challenges around quagga mussel invasion. The team was immediately interested and curious and we quickly proposed an appointment to discuss the possibility of writing an article. The newspaper "Comment ça marche" is a French magazine for people around 15 years old and more, curious to know more about science and the nature that surrounds us. Thus, the magazine presents monthly scientific articles, interviews with professionals as well as a section containing the latest astonishing scientific news. This collaboration made us very happy since the magazine deals with subjects that are in line with those of iGEM, such as science and innovation. This allowed us to reach out and educate another type of audience. It seemed important for us to reach and educate the actors of today and tomorrow. The article in question appeared in September 2022 in issue 142.
Newspaper “L’Auditoire” from the University of Lausanne
To further expand our audience, we thought that we could contact our university newspaper “L’Auditoire”, whose public is completely different from “Comment ça marche”. We therefore set an appointment with the manager to discuss the quagga mussels problem in the lakes and our solution. We agreed on the publication of an article, online and on paper, for the beginning of September. We put a lot of effort in explaining our project as clearly as possible, but while reviewing the article we noticed that some key concepts were missing. This made us realize how difficult it is to properly convey scientific information. An exchange of email allowed us to resolve this issue. This experience allowed us to subsequently improve the way we communicate and to take a step back from the project and the subject of synthetic biology. This shows us the importance of taking the time to interact with people and make science and research fields, such as synthetic biology, accessible.
The article was published on the 28th August of 2022 and can be read here: https://lauditoire.ch/2022/08/28/biodiversite-des-lacs-mise-a-lepreuve/
“Youth Science” association
To further promote our project and raise awareness of the issue, we contacted the “Youth Science” association, which is an association that promotes science among young people. In particular, during the International Swiss Talent Forum (ISTF), young people come from all over Europe to discuss certain current issues related to science in an attempt to find solutions. In addition, "Youth Science" sets up a national competition for high school thesis every year. After they finish high school, students who participated and won are then tracked by the association that follows what students are doing now in University. One of our team members, Marta, participated in the national competition when she was still in high school and was interviewed. During the interview Marta discussed iGEM as well as our “Quagg’out” project.
You can find the article here: https://sjf.ch/fr/une-alumna-de-sej-veut-sauver-le-leman/
"The transcriptome" blog
“The Transcriptome” blog was created three years ago by the 2020’s team of the University of Gothenburg and the University of Lausanne. Those teams created this blog with the aim of sharing their knowledge of science in such a way that a non-scientific audience can understand our texts. Since its creation in 2020, the blog has been used in 2021 as well as in 2022 when we decided to perpetuate the traditions but this time by writing the articles in pairs once a week. The pairs were made up of one person from each team, making it possible to reinforce this collaborative aspect of the blog. In addition, we decided to expand our community by collaborating with other teams such as the team from Tokyo (Team Waseda-Tokyo, Japan), Freiburg (Team Freiburg, Germany) and Monterrey (Team Tec Chihuahua, Mexico). To advertise the blog we reached out to our, and Chalmer’s, Instagram community. Thus, the blog was able to reach a wider audience with "guest" articles, written by other teams, or numerous translations allowing you to find our articles in English, French, Swedish, Spanish, German and Japanese. The topics presented in the blog articles are very varied. We speak in particular of genetic engineering, bioprinting, ethology, reverse aging and many more subjects.
You can find the blog here : https://thetranscriptome.com
“Fréquence banane”
Fréquence Banane is a student university radio station of the University of Lausanne which was created in 1993. It can be listened 24 hours a day and seven days a week on cable (94.55 MHz) in the Lausanne region and broadcast on FM monthly by year (90.4 MHz). Thus, this radio channel is mainly intended for students from UNIL, EPFL and UNIGE. Allowing us to reach an audience of young adults, we decided to contact Fréquence Banane to have the opportunity to talk about our “Quagg’out” project. Thus, on September 28, 2022, some members of the team were able to explain what our iGEM 2022 project. The topics covered included invasive species and the economic, health and ecological repercussions they cause. In addition, we could discuss iGEM and the problem we wanted to combat: quagga mussels. The podcast produced will be available in October on the radio's website and Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
RTS radio
Radio Télévision Suisse, RTS, is a Swiss radio and television channel created in 2010. RTS broadcasts on four radio channels, two television channels and numerous digital platforms. Swiss radio and television are read and listened to throughout Switzerland by more than 800,000 people out of 2 millions francophone Swiss residents (© Office fédéral de la statistique, 2021). For this reason we contacted the RTS, through our contact at Youth Science, and had an interview with them. We talked about iGEM, synthetic biology and our Quagg'out project during our interview. In addition, we also developed our results and the prospects for our iGEM project. The interview will be in paper form for an internet article in which an audio piece of the interview will be integrated.
The article is available here: https://www.rts.ch/info/sciences-tech/environnement/13458080-une-bacterie-modifiee-genetiquement-pour-lutter-contre-la-moule-quagga.html
And the podcast is available here: https://www.rts.ch/audio-podcast/2022/audio/le-journal-de-6h-presente-par-benoit-cornu-25861307.html
References
Extinction Over Time | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2022, from http://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/paleontology/extinction-over-time
Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia—Specie aliene invasive—IAS (Invasive Alien Species). (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.regione.fvg.it/rafvg/cms/RAFVG/ambiente-territorio/tutela-ambiente-gestione-risorse-naturali/FOGLIA01/#id1
© Office fédéral de la statistique. (2021). PANORAMA [Review of PANORAMA]. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/fr/home/statistiques/population.assetdetail.16704277.html