In order to promote an integration between our project and the society, expanding our horizons beyond our university, the Synthetic Biology Tournament was born as an alternative to share and aggregate knowledge, also providing a dynamic integration between schoolchildren and synthetic biology.
We contacted two schools in the city where we study, the ETEC Padre Carlos Leôncio da Silva and the Conde de Moreira Lima Municipal School, and organized five weeks of activities and classes for the competition. We worked with students of different age groups, both in high school and elementary school. In order to adapt the language and didactics to each of these groups, we prepared different handouts and classes for each target audience.
For the tournament with elementary school Conde de Moreira Lima, we from the iGEM EEL - USP team chose 'Vaccines' as the main theme. This was chosen with the purpose of highlighting the importance of vaccination and demystifying fake news involving its production, something that unfortunately in Brazil was very widespread in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of this, the idea of proposing this theme arose so that the students could study and understand how vaccines work and also the whole biological and scientific concept behind them, in a more simplified way and directed to their age group.
To help them during the project, we prepared an appendix with the main vaccines describing in a clear and objective way how diseases are spread, what the main symptoms are, which are the vaccines for these diseases and their respective effects and mechanisms of action. In this way, the groups would have a didactic support material to guide them when choosing their own project theme.
During the 5 weeks proposed for the tournament's realization, classes were given explaining about the Honorato project, basics about synthetic biology such as the central dogma and what DNA and RNA are, and also about vaccines, explaining how they work, how they are produced and their importance.
Figure 1 - Class
Besides the presential classes, we created rooms in google classroom where we made available recorded classes about the same themes discussed in class, and we also created monitoring groups via social networks to help the students and solve eventual doubts about the project. Thus it was possible to follow the learning of these students in real time, which was very gratifying for us as a team, to be able to follow this development through this learning process in an interactive way, and also to observe the interest of students growing in synthetic biology.
At the end of the event, each group of students presented a complete project about the chosen vaccine, relating it to the aggregated knowledge of synthetic biology and exposing the research done by them. In this presentation, the criteria defined by the organization committee were evaluated, this was done so that we could observe how much the concepts were absorbed by the students and if they understood the project's proposal.
For the tournament with the ETEC Padre Calor Leôncio da Silva’s students, we selected as main theme Neglected Tropical Diseases, this theme was chosen because it was somehow related to the Honorato project, since we approached the impact of ophidic accidents mainly in more precarious regions of the country that do not have access to anti-hyphid serum, which is also a neglected problem. To guide the students during the tournament, we prepared a handout referring to the main neglected diseases present in the official list of the World Health Organization, this way they could consult this material and choose a disease to be worked on.
Figure 2 - Class
This is the version of the didactic material made for TBS:
This is one of the lessons that was given:
The Synthetic Biology Tournament was a truly enriching and impactful experience, giving us the opportunity to explore a healthy and aggregating environment within the classroom and share our knowledge to the same extent that we learned from the participants.
On June 24th of this year, we from the iGEM EEL - USP team made a presentation of our project during the Synthetic Biology Week, organized by the Synthetic Biology Club from the Engineering School of Lorena. The experience, counting with the presence of professors from the Biotechnology Department of our college and with several other researchers in the area, allowed us not only to gather more knowledge about synthetic biology, but also to give more visibility to our project and present it to our school community.
In this presentation, we collaborated with the iGEM team from USP - São Paulo (Team USP-Brazil) by inviting them to participate in the event together with us and present their project to the students of our campus as well. The talk was open to the whole campus and was attended by several students and teachers from the university.
Figure 3 - Synthetic Biology Week
This year, we also expanded our boundaries to the national level. It was our role to be part of the organization of the Second Edition of the Brazilian Synthetic Biology Olympiad (OBBS), held by the iGEM USP- São Paulo team in partnership with the Ministry of Education. We submitted 32 questions to compose the tests of the Olympiad, provided reference materials for participating students, such as our synthetic biology textbook and recorded video lessons, and also participated in the review of the test questions.
The Olympiad began on September 19 and included the participation of elementary and high school students from all over Brazil, but specially pupils in the first grade of high school.
Figure 4 - School Grade Chart
Source: Author (2022)
Working in a single stage, the test was composed of 20 questions covering a variety of subjects involving synthetic biology and the closing took place on September 25th. Thus, the top 10 participants (respecting the selection criteria, quotas and tie-breakers) are invited to participate in a scientific immersion at the University of São Paulo (USP).
The Synthetic Biology Immersion Week, or Synthetic Biology Winter School - EIBS, is the special prize for the 10 OBBS winners, its idea was to offer a week full of activities related to Synthetic Biology, showing the possible research opportunities in the area and related fields. This way, the students got to know several research institutes, such as ICB (Biomedical Sciences Institute), IPT (Technological Research Institute), IMT (Tropical Medicine Institute from the USP medical school), Butantan Institute, and they also attended lectures from scientists who work with synthetic biology. Besides that the students developed a practical activity related to synthetic biology, in addition, cultural activities took place, such as visits to museums in the city of São Paulo.
This project reached 1604 students from all over the country and was applied even in regions with difficult access, such as states that are neglected when it comes to educational issues. We had participants from 14 states, which represents 53,85 % of the states in our country, among them, São Paulo and Pernambuco stood out with a large number of participants.
Figure 5 - Brazilian States Chart
Source: Author (2022)
Our country states are grouped into regions, such as South, North, Northeast, Southeast, South and Midwest, we managed to reach all of them, specially the southeast ( 44,1%) and northeast (41,7%). The strong participation from students in the northeast was an important impact of this project because this region is more impoverished and often neglected when it comes to education.
Figure 6 - Brazilian regions chart
Source: Author (2022)
We are also very proud of the participation of women in the OBBS, they were the majority of the contestants, and we hope to have encouraged the growth of women's involvement in STEM. Therefore, we widely spread the knowledge about synthetic biology.
Figure 7 - Participants' gender chart
Source: Author (2022)
After the Olympiad we received a lot of positive feedback from the participants, they told us through social media, it was a great rewarding experience and they would love to do it again in the next year.
Organized by the Academic Center of Biochemical Engineering, the Industrial Biotechnology Week (SBI) of the Engineering School of Lorena is an event held every year with the presence of several teachers, students and researchers from the Biotechnology Department of our campus and other universities.
We submitted our project to be presented as a poster exhibition among the lectures, but we were invited by the organizing committee to give a lecture on September 16 with the title "Production of BJ46a for the treatment of Bothrops snake ophidic accidents".
At the end of the lecture, many participants of the event showed interest in Honorato's proposal and asked us more specific questions about the mathematical modeling part, about the laboratory area and the projects we organized during the year. We also received many compliments on our effort to break the barriers between science and society through the events at schools and the direct contact we had with high school and elementary students during the Synthetic Biology Tournament and the other activities.
It was rewarding to present our work at the Industrial Biotechnology Week and it allowed us to see the Honorato project under new perspectives also through the conversations and sharing that we had with our teachers and students.
Figure 8 - Presentation at SBI
We understand the importance of intervening in every sense of the ophidic accidents to ways to avoid them, for this we made a series of posts on our instagram that, besides promoting Honorato, we show how to avoid ophidic accidents when in areas of risk and also the importance that snakes have in our ecosystem, since they are part of a complex food chain. However, in our region it is common that people end up killing snakes out of fear, so we did our best to show the importance of these animals and how to deal with them without putting yourself at risk.
Education is the basis of any society. With this in mind, our team, as part of our proposal to bring knowledge from the academic field to the population, seeking to democratize this access, visited elementary and high schools to discuss a very important topic: ophidic accidents and how synthetic biology is effectively involved.
In partnership with Marie Curie Vestibulares, on June 1, we went to the Arnolfo Azevedo State School, in the city of Lorena - SP, to present our project to the children, in a class exceptionally formed as an adjunct to the curriculum and focused on the study of engineering for 7th grade students of Elementary school, which corresponds to an age group mostly concentrated between 11 and 13 years old. The presentation was followed by a dynamic, in which we evaluated the opposition between the knowledge learned in the scientific environment and the common sense knowledge spread in society.
Several misconceptions were then explained and we showed new introductory knowledge about synthetic biology, stimulating the taste for scientific learning and promoting the notion of scientific research as a mechanism for social development. In return, we had wide participation from the students, with enthusiasm for the subject and figurations of what was taught, as well as a depoiment provided by one of them about his family experience with ophidic accidents. All this shows us how ophidisms are present in our society and how important and emergent it is to raise awareness about this subject.
Additionally, in August, we visited the Federal Institute of Bahia in Vitória da Conquista - BA, invited by a teacher of the subject Biochemical Reactors for the Environmental Engineering degree course, so that we could present an exemplification of the concepts grounded in the classroom and bring the scope of our project. The communication of the ofidisms and how synthetic biology acts through Honorato, was well received and responded to by the undergraduates.
In the same week as before, we went to the Colégio Nossa Senhora de Fátima, also in Vitória da Conquista, to spread scientific knowledge and awareness about snakes, also covering the grid content required by the national educational base. Essentially for high school classes, with about 300 students between 15 and 18 years old, our team brought as its agenda the applied biology and genetics - and how they fostered the emergence of synthetic biology. The confrontation between common sense and scientific knowledge, again, was established, demystifying many of the concepts disseminated in society regarding the treatment for snake bites and, with wide participation of the students, we approached the associated first aid practices. Finally, we also extended an invitation to the students to participate in the OBBS (Brazilian Synthetic Biology Olympiad), developed by Team USP.
Finally, on September 8, we organized a presentation of our project at Colégio Cooperpro Objetivo in Casa Branca, São Paulo for all grades of high school. The presentation was a very enriching experience for both us and the participating students because it allowed a more direct contact of the Honorato project with young people aiming to enter college and curious about areas involving biology and technology, which through iGEM we have the opportunity to explore. We gave them space to ask questions about our graduation course, about our college experience, and also about our role within the iGEM team and how we organize the project.
We also held conversation circles to talk about the subject of ophidic accidents and the experiences of students who, living in a city in the interior of São Paulo, where cattle raising on farms is common, have already witnessed cases of ophidic accidents, either in cattle or people they live with. Thus, we were also able to demystify some myths and common-sense about how to deal with ophidic accidents and what care to take until proper medical attention. Participating in the presentation at the Casa Branca School was for us a stimulating experience and, by arousing interest among the students, resulted in a mutual and aggregating exchange of knowledge.
All these meetings with society were extremely fruitful. By demystifying and explaining the concepts both about snakes and about ofidisms and first aid, the communication between the university environment and society took place based on the teaching brought by synthetic biology. In parallel, the dialogue established between the parties revealed the need to carry out our research, facing a problem that is so present in our country, but that is neglected by the health authorities.
We conclude, therefore, that this ambiguous impact provides the growth of the most complementary faces of knowledge: scientific and social.
OMS. OMS pede investimentos no combate a doenças tropicais negligenciadas | Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde MS. Saude.gov.br. Published 2020. Accessed September 8, 2022.