Overview

In the iGEM UTokyo 2022 project, we conducted nine educational activities. We reached over 1,200 participants. Our educational activities were divided into two main categories: first, we have developed our own tool, Genochemy, to help as many people as possible understand synthetic biology in an easy-to-understand and enjoyable way, and second, we intensively educated small groups of scientifically minded high school students to have them understand the diverse aspects of synthetic biology in detail. Regarding the first category, this enables people to experience synthetic biology as long as they have access to the Internet. We have held workshops throughout the season using Genochemy, learning from the feedback of people from diverse backgrounds, and have continued to improve Genochemy. We are still developing it to achieve our goal of "low entrance, high ceiling," which means that it is easy enough for anyone to begin but has the potential to take the user to a very high level. Regarding the second, one of the participants decided to join a team of high school students in Japan who are now seeking to participate in iGEM. We will continue to work with him in the future.

Apart from these two categories, we also developed a game called ATP Battle for our school festival, gave a talk on the fun, possibilities and ethical code of synthetic biology at an event sponsored by the Science Olympiad organization, held a lecture discussing the relationship between synthetic biology and social issues related to the SDGs, and so on.

Education using Genochemy

This year we developed Genochemy, a block programming system like Scratch for synthetic biology (Scratch is a famous block programming system developed by MIT). Genochemy enables people to create gene circuits easily, just by connecting blocks. Genochemy works in web browsers. Thus, it helps the spread of synthetic biology because people can have fun learning about gene circuits by simply accessing the website. Throughout the year, we held lectures using Genochemy, received feedback, and improved it, while learning what participants thought about programming living things through using Genochemy.

Genochemy Basics

You can access Genochemy (iGEM wiki deployed version) here.

It works on computers and tablets. Supported browsers are Chrome and Firefox. Safari is not supported yet.

You can add blocks by dragging and dropping it from the tray in the bottom of the screen.

And when you bring the block closer to others, they will automatically connect to each other.

When you have created a circuit, you can run it by clicking the Run button on the right edge of the screen, and you can see how it works.

You can also create more complex circuits. For example, you can simulate our 2022 project in Genochemy (when the correct order is Blue → Red → Blue)!

You will learn more about how to use Genochemy from the tutorial and questions which appear in Genochemy.

Go to the Software page for more information.

Purpose and Target

As we went through a number of education events, we gradually expanded our target users and broadened our purpose of education using Genochemy. At first, we targeted high school students who had just started studying biology. In Japan, much of what students do in biology classes is rote memorization. Thus we wanted the students to know the fun of creating gene circuits (See Use Case 1). Then, we found that college students interested in biology also can be targeted (See Use Case 2). We noticed that Genochemy may be the first step towards becoming interested in biology for those who are interested in other fields, especially computer science. This is because Genochemy enables them to "program" microorganisms (See Use Case 3). Finally, we published Genochemy via Twitter. Now it is available for anyone, including those who had no chance to access the lab and experience synthetic biology before. They can experience programming microorganisms anywhere and anytime as long as they have a device and access to the Internet (See Use Case 4).

Currently we are planning to implement Genochemy in the high school curriculum. Some teachers said visualizing the gene circuit using Genochemy may make it easy for the students to understand when they teach biology. We are considering contacting textbook companies.

By learning what users want to know and where they have difficulty, we implemented new features and made the system easier to grasp throughout the season. The details are described below.

Use Case 1. Lecture at a high school

In Japan, biology in the high school curriculum is focused on memorization of the mechanisms and students tend to think that biology is a boring subject of rote memorization. We wanted the students to learn how fun it is to understand living things through the experience of creating them on Genochemy. Since programming became compulsory in elementary schools from 2020 in Japan, programming education is booming. Thus, we came to think that understanding life by programming gene circuits is a good way to teach the fun part of biology. We used Genochemy (v0.1) for the lecture at Komagome High School in Japan. More than 30 students joined this lecture. We prepared a simple repressor, activator and two fluorescence proteins on Genochemy.

In the lecture, we first explained the basics of biology. Then, we asked each student to work on their own, following the worksheet we prepared describing the detailed steps of Genochemy. This method was taken from the way it is taught in programming schools for children. It enables students to learn at their own pace, which largely differs from student to student. The students formed groups of four, and basically they taught each other when they faced difficult points. If it was too difficult to solve on their own, we (six iGEM members participated in this lecture) helped them solve the problems.

Learning from feedbacks

In the questionnaire they answered after the class, almost 90% of the students said they did not know about synthetic biology before the lecture, but about 75% became interested in synthetic biology.

From their opinions such as "I found that we human have the ability to modify living things by ourselves", "It was interesting like programming", and "I could imagine the concepts easily because I could control living things on a PC", we found that the programming aspect of synthetic biology could be understood well by Genochemy.

From the opinions such as "It was interesting to see how transcription works and how repressors and activators work based on the knowledge I already had", "Personally, I thought biology was all about rote memorization and not very interesting, but I really enjoyed the time I spent thinking with my friends in this session. Thank you." and "It was a pleasure to think 'why the organism acted as it did' ", it can be said that we were able to promote active learning, beyond the current curriculum which needs rote memorization.

For the question "What do you want to do using synthetic biology?," there were many ideas we were surprised and had never thought of before. Ideas like "If I could move microorganisms, dreams may expand" and "I want to make them dance!" suggests that they found it would be interesting to control the movement of living things. We are doing synthetic biology and did not think much of the idea of controlling the movements of organisms, but when we thought about it, we realized that Scratch has one of the most basic blocks: moving the target object (e.g. the orange cat). We thought that if synthetic biology could also make organisms move freely, it would open up a world of possibilities. We would like to consider implementing this idea in Genochemy in the future, such as motion control using motor proteins.

However, some students said that they could not feel as if they were writing a program for real life. On this point, we might have simplified the concept of biology too much for the implementation into Genochemy. Thus, we increased the number of blocks, such as recombinase and more kinds of activators, and made it possible to create more complex circuits, which are close to those designed in real synthetic biology. These were implemented in Genochemy (v0.2).

Use Case 2. Summer Synbio Lecture with iGEM Waseda_Tokyo

For this lecture, the participants were mainly expected to be high school or university students. We did not require advanced prior knowledge of biology and targeted a wide range of students. We guess people who found the words "synthetic biology" or "iGEM" interesting heard this lecture through our promotion.

We used Genochemy (v0.2). With more blocks implemented in v0.2, it was possible to reproduce this year's project of iGEM UTokyo. Thus, we used Genochemy to describe our project. We implemented the import button, by which users can import our construct to Genochemy.

Learning from feedbacks

Many participants answered that it was interesting. They enjoyed using recombinases and light-induced activators. However, most said the three questions we prepared for the lecture were all too difficult.

Thus after the lecture we set up nine questions, whose level gradually increased, and the final question was to make the circuit of our project. The questions were shown in a short sentence and illustration like below, in the bottom right of the screen. For some questions we also prepared the answers so that the players could learn from the answers. In the future we would like to implement a judging system, which calculates whether the circuit created by users is correct or not.

The image above are examples of questions.

Also, based on the feedback, we changed our direction of Genochemy development. Until v0.2, we struggled to implement more kinds of blocks, enabling people to create complex circuits. However, from v0.3, we focused on making Genochemy easier to use by wider people, in response to the participants' feedback. However, making Genochemy easier was not as easy as we expected. It was essential to keep receiving feedback. We had to revise it repeatedly, and we decided to continue doing it.

Use Case 3. Lecture at the event "Transintellisession conference"

We held an online workshop using Genochemy in an event called "Transintellisession conference" held by an organization called "i factorial". "i factorial" is a student organization that supports the exploration activities of high school and university students under the concept of "academia for amateurs". Students from various fields and interests joined the event.

We decided to join this event because we found that Genochemy can offer a valuable experience of biology even for students interested in other fields, especially computer science. This is because they can "program" living things in Genochemy, which they might feel familiar with. Also, targeting students from computer science may be beneficial for synthetic biology because synthetic biology originally progressed along with information science. iGEM was also launched partially by professors whose major is computer science, for example Dr. Tom Knight. By attracting more students from computer science into this field, the foundation of synthetic biology may advance.

We aimed to make students who are interested in information science, as well as biology, feel more familiar with synthetic biology. Also, we wanted to hear how they felt about programming microorganisms compared to programming normal computers, in order to understand how students interested in computer science think of synthetic biology. Moreover, we wanted to get feedback on Genochemy and our way of education to improve them.

To make the lecture interactive, we used CommentScreen, an app which enables the participants to comment and the speaker to see them flow in the screen from right to left. About fifteen people joined our lecture, but even those who did not join the event could learn what participants thought because they could comment via Twitter.

We used Genochemy (v0.3) for having participants experience synthetic biology programming. Also, we used slides to explain the basics of synthetic biology. First we described the basics of synthetic biology, the aspects of DNA as programming language and the basics of Genochemy. Then, we showed how we use Genochemy and what we can construct to the participants by pair-programming with one of the students who was not familiar with biology but interested in computer science. Other participants accessed Genochemy via the browser and imitated what we did.

Learning from feedback

In the preparation of the event, some people who had used Genochemy (v0.2) said that it was sometimes difficult to judge the fluorescence strength from the cell appearance and it is better if a graph is shown. Therefore we implemented the graph feature, in which the time variation of fluorescence strength of mCherry and GFP could be seen. We developed this with a student from the Waseda_Tokyo team (see Collaborations page).

The student pair-programmed with us said that Genochemy was quite interesting. He found Genochemy is like a programming language which is executed on a living system. He said that the expression of GFP is like printf function in the C programming language, and using this "debug" feature (used for logging the state), he constructed a competitive quiz game in Genochemy. Other than him, we interviewed some participants after the lecture, via Twitter DM. They said they felt no resistance to programming living organisms. For instance, one participant answered "it is natural for me that organisms are programmable". However, genetically modified organisms are sometimes avoided in society. Genochemy, which enables programming living organisms by dragging-and-dropping blocks, might be able to reduce the hurdle towards genetic modification.

In addition, some pointed out that it is difficult to imagine how the program constructed in Genochemy is executed in real life. Therefore, we described that blocks in Genochemy are convertible to DNA sequences, and that real DNA sequences can be ordered from companies like IDT or eurofins, and after it arrives, we can insert the DNA into real organisms by "transformation". Hearing our explanation, they could grasp the whole process. Through this dialogue, we realized Genochemy lacked the feature to enable users to imagine the real process in synthetic biology. Then, we implemented new functions which enables users to convert Genochemy blocks to virtual DNA sequences and learn how the sequences are ordered and used, to Genochemy v0.7.

Inclusivity

To make Genochemy a more accessible educational tool to everyone, we consulted color-blind people to hear whether the colors were difficult to tell from each other, since Genochemy uses various colors for each kind of block. We got the opinion that most parts were distinguishable and two blocks whose colors looked similar had quite different shapes so it was OK. However, they said it would be more reassuring if we fill the blocks of the same shape with different patterns, like dots or lines. Thus blocks are designed with different patterns in Genochemy v0.7

For more information, please visit Inclusivity page.

Use Case 4. Online Competition

We found that Genochemy may be the first step to learn synthetic biology for anyone. All they need is a network connection, and they can learn gene circuits anytime and anywhere. This is Genochemy's strength compared to other educational materials which require lab work.

Before releasing Genochemy to everyone, we prepared a tutorial which consists of twelve slides, shown in the bottom right tab. We also prepared help tooltips in many places. When you hover over a block, the description appears. We previously used Genochemy in lectures, where we can give a verbal explanation, but when we opened Genochemy to the public, users needed to know the details including the meaning of the blocks on Genochemy by themselves.

Then we released Genochemy via Twitter. At the same time we held an online competition, in which participants shared interesting gene circuits they created. They can easily share what they created from the tweet button. Based on data collected from Google Analytics, so far 500 users have accessed Genochemy.

Unfortunately only a few circuits have been submitted. Seven circuits from three people were shared. We came to the conclusion that circuits created by all people were interesting, so we gave awards to all of them.

• Oscillator by pen-name "metalichanpen": he created an oscillating circuit (though it will be damped), by adjusting the expression rate of repressors and activators.
• Ebb and flow by pen-name "eggplant": he created a system which comes and goes between two phases, one is relatively stable and the other is relatively unstable, by using two recombinases.
• Survival game by pen-name "BoardFaerie": he created a survival game. The player has to balance the ratio of red light ON/OFF over time not to express the killswitch gene much. The dangerous rate (killswitch expression level) can be seen by the fluorescence of mCherry, which is co-expressed with killswitch.

Learning from feedback

Some people told us via Twitter that the block names were difficult to understand. At the time, we used the actual protein names for block names to have the users feel as if Genochemy was more real, but it made it hard for the people unfamiliar with biology to grasp the functions of the blocks. Thus we changed block names, and they are now named after their features, from v0.5. For example, the previous EL222 block is now named Blue-light-sensor.

Use Case 5. Workshop at Most Prestigious Schools

Eiko Gakuen

Eiko Gakuen is one of the most prestigious junior and senior high schools in Japan, and many of its graduates go on to become scientists and policy makers. However, less than 10% of the students take the "advanced biology" class. As students who will have a great impact on science and society, it is very important to have knowledge of biology, especially synthetic biology. Therefore, we decided to give lectures on synthetic biology to these students.

We used Genochemy (v0.6). Since the target audience was mainly junior and high school students who were not familiar with biology, Genochemy was the best choice for them because Genochemy could be enjoyed even if they did not have any knowledge of biology, and they could learn how the genetic circuit works as they played with it.

At the lecture, first we briefly explained what synthetic biology is, what kind of competition iGEM is, and what projects iGEM UTokyo is involved in. After that, Genochemy was introduced and the participants were divided into groups to play with it freely.

80% of the students had never heard of synthetic biology before the lecture, but in a post-lecture survey, all of them said they had become interested in synthetic biology. In addition, more than 90% of the students answered that Genochemy was interesting. When we introduced Genochemy, everyone was enthusiastic about it without any explanation from us, indicating a very strong interest in the subject. Previously, we gave a lecture using Genochemy at Komagome High School (Use Case 1), but at that time, we prepared worksheets and had the students work through them in order following our explanations. In this lecture, we were able to let the students do what they wanted without any particular explanation. This is because we improved Genochemy and added quizzes. As a result, students at Eiko Gakuen were more passionate about Genochemy, leading to spontaneous learning.

In addition, by having junior and high school students actually play with it, we were able to obtain critical feedback. They still said it was difficult for them to have a clear image of real organisms, as the participant at Use Case 3 said. Also, they said the tutorial was hard to understand. This feedback led us to improvements that would enable Genochemy to reach a wider audience.

Tsukukoma

Junior and Senior High School at Komaba, University of Tsukuba (Tsukukoma) is also one of the most prestigious junior and senior high schools in Japan, and many of its graduates go on to become future scientists and policy makers as well. 18 senior and junior high school students in the biology club at Tsukukoma joined this workshop.

We used Genochemy (v0.7). Many of the junior high school students had little knowledge of biology, so Genochemy was suitable because it was fun even if they had no knowledge of biology, and they could learn how genetic circuits work as they played with it. First, We gave a brief explanation on synthetic biology and iGEM. After that, Genochemy was introduced and the participants were free to play with it on their own while the usage and biological background was explained. Finally, Genochemy was used to explain this year's iGEM UTokyo project.

After the first explanation, the students worked hard on Genochemy, discussing it amongst themselves. It seems to have enabled students to learn spontaneously. Also, they seemed to strongly concentrate on the subject, proving that Genochemy was able to stimulate interest in synthetic biology. When we introduced our project using Genochemy, they understood with amazement that such a thing could be done with a living organism. The lecture was a success in that we were able to promote synthetic biology to promising junior and senior high school students.

In the questionnaire forms sent to eighteen participants after the lecture (responses were twelve), all stated that Genochemy was interesting. However, some pointed out improvements. They said the functions of the various blocks, such as promoters and activators, were difficult to understand at first glance. Certainly we noticed in the lecture that they seemed unable to understand how promoters and transcriptional regulation behave, so we explained the function of specific molecules using the slides used to explain our project. In the questionnaire, they answered "an explanation of biological terminology would be helpful," and we thought it might be good to add effects that would help them imagine the meaning of terminology. This point is considered later in (6) of the New Concept.

Discussion with Education Experts

We tried to make Genochemy as easy as possible, but it is not perfect. Feedback has been divided, with some people saying that it is "very interesting and fun" and others saying that it is "hard to visualize and understand." The former were people who had some knowledge of synthetic biology, or who had done some programming, or who liked this kind of simulation game. However, even those who knew biology were sometimes confused. For the latter, we explained the background knowledge as clearly as possible and they understood.

To improve Genochemy further, we consulted education experts. They are high school biology teachers and instructors of robotics programming school.

High school biology teachers

We asked teachers how we could make it easier for high school students to use Genochemy. They told us that the terms and concepts used in Genochemy were somewhat different from the school curriculum, so we should revise it. We also thought that if we could incorporate Genochemy into the school curriculum, more students would be able to experience biology by "making" it rather than memorizing it. They said that in the lecture of operons, Genochemy can be implemented if it promotes the students' understanding. Moreover, one teacher said that if Genochemy is introduced in textbooks, it might be drastically spread. At this point, we are planning to consult publishers after we adjust Genochemy to school curriculum terms and concepts, which would make it easy to explain the merits of introducing Genochemy in the textbooks to them.

LEGO School instructors

We also visited LEGO School, which teaches Robotics Programming to children, to introduce Genochemy to their instructors, have them use it, and get feedback. Although there is a difference between Genochemy for living creatures and LEGO for robots, they use a block programming tool called LEGO Spike for their education, and we thought that they might share the same issues with us, such as it being difficult to teach those who are not familiar with robots and programs.

The concept of the LEGO Spike tool is "low entrance, high ceiling," which means that it is easy enough for anyone to begin but has the potential to take the user to a very high level. It is a concept that we can strongly feel empathy with, as we want to target a wide range of people. We received a lot of specific advice on how we could motivate users to naturally desire to make something or think that they could do it while having fun. As a result, the following new concept was decided upon. It will be implemented soon.

This new screen proposal has many improvements over the current Genochemy.

(1) In Genochemy, the description in the block is currently very short, for example, "Constitutive" for the constitutive promoter, but in Scratch and LEGO Spike, the description is written in sentences. We were advised that this would be easier to grasp the image, so we will make the change. In response, the design of the block will drastically be changed so that multiple lines of explanation could be added.

(2) It was pointed out that the blocks in the current tray section are just lined up, and although the types of blocks can be recognized by their shapes and colors, they are not explicitly grouped, so it is difficult to understand what the blocks are. Therefore, we will modify it to display the name of the block type.

(3) To motivate the users, instead of making all the blocks available from the beginning, they will be unlocked as they progress through the task. This way, they can be surprised, like "Now I can do this!" "I didn't know it was possible to do this!".

(4) Rather than asking people to theoretically create a circuit with a certain kind of function, we plan to introduce social issues and what organisms can do to solve them, and then ask people to create their own genetic circuits, thus bringing it closer to the context of the real world. We think they will understand the usefulness of synthetic biology in solving social problems.

(5) The place where Genomy (Genochemy's virtual organism) exists is called Lab, but it was pointed out that the space was abstract and difficult to understand. Therefore, we will make it possible to display concrete experimental apparatuses such as petri dishes. It would also be good to allow the user to choose the experimental apparatuses, and the number of available apparatuses will increase as the user progresses through the tasks, just as in the case of blocks.

(6) To give it a sense of reality, we are also thinking of adding animation effects that show the transformation process and the DNA being expressed when starting an experiment.

We also managed to finish the development of Genochemy v0.7 and implemented a function to show how the blocks are converted into DNA sequences and how the sequences are used in real organisms, which we had planned since Use Case 3. This function was used to explain to the instructors at the LEGO School and we were able to give them a concrete image of how it would work in an actual living organism.

Conclusion

We continued improving Genochemy and implementing it in education.

We succeeded in introducing the world of synthetic biology to more than 600 people using Genochemy!

We managed to make Genochemy easier, but still it may not be enough. Since our tool can be accessed through a web browser, without lab access, we believe it has a great potential to spread synthetic biology. We would like to keep improving Genochemy by listening to the feedback from a wide range of people.

Furthermore, we think that Genochemy has the potential to be used not only in schools but also more broadly in society, such as when scientists want to explain about gene circuits to people who do not have the background of biology in business. We would like to make Genochemy useful in wider contexts.

Finally, it is important to measure the change of the participants' knowledge and understanding of synthetic biology before and after playing Genochemy. So far, we have relied on feedback, but in the future we would like to measure it by evaluating Genochemy's performance through more objective testing.

We welcome people who use Genochemy for their education.

Everyone can freely use Genochemy for your education. Please use our lectures written above as reference. If you have any questions, contact us via email or Twitter shown in the footer.

The lecture at the "Suuri-no-Tsubasa Salon"

Target

We held an educational event for junior and senior high school students who participated in "Suuri-no-Tsubasa Salon," an online seminar hosted by the NPO Suuri-no-Tsubasa on May 15. This organization works to create opportunities for junior and senior high school students to learn cutting-edge science and broaden their perspective in the natural sciences. There were 450 participants in this seminar, and they were able to choose which seminar to take from 24 seminars, one of which was our seminar on synthetic biology and iGEM. Many of the participants were students with a strong interest in cutting-edge natural science. Through this educational event, we hoped that they would not only learn about synthetic biology, but also become interested in the technical and social implementation aspects, such as iGEM, and become involved in the future development of this field.

Purpose

We had the following five objectives.

• To make the students aware of the existence and build interest in synthetic biology and iGEM.
• To improve the somewhat rooted image of genetic modification as dangerous, by providing students with in-depth knowledge of genetic modification technology.
• To let the students know the significance of applying advanced technologies to society because these topics are rarely covered in high schools.
• To make the students aware of ethical issues in life science, especially synthetic biology, to have them form their own opinions, and to share these opinions with others.
• To have them learn about project examples of iGEM and gain a concrete image of iGEM.

Contents

We started with a lecture on synthetic biology and iGEM, and then had time for discussion and a Q&A session. About 40 of the seminar attendees listened to our lecture. In order to make it more interesting to them, we deliberated beforehand and kept the following points in mind.

• To ensure that the content of the lecture is not biased.

To be inclusive of both those interested in the scientific aspects of synthetic biology and those interested in its engineering applications.

• To interact with participants.

By asking questions during the lecture, we tried to grasp the participants' image of synthetic biology in real time, and to improve that image.

• To be specific.

By introducing not only what synthetic biology and iGEM are but also the past projects of past iGEM teams, we hoped to give participants an idea of what can be done with synthetic biology and how interesting it can be.

After the lecture, we had time for an interactive discussion and Q&A on zoom. The discussion provided a good opportunity to recognize issues in synthetic biology and to share their own opinions on topics such as "Technology is actually developing, and more and more things can be done in the laboratory, but what do I think about it from an ethical point of view?"

Lecture (given over zoom)

Feedback

Overall, the seminar was very favorable, with many students showing not only a casual interest in synthetic biology, but also an interest in specific technologies, social applications, and problems that need to be solved. We received the following responses:

• Many participants said "Synthetic biology sounds interesting!" and "iGEM is amazing!" Furthermore, their impressions seemed to have spread on SNS, so even people who did not participate in this event were able to learn about "synthetic biology" and "iGEM."
• Though a few people responded during the lecture by asking if they had a somewhat negative image of synthetic biology, by making people aware of the technologies actually used in the field of synthetic biology and biosafety, the presentation alleviated the image of danger that had been somewhat present.
• In learning about the actual activities of iGEM and exchanging ideas, some participants shared their opinion about the significance of implementing technology in society and improving projects with input from various people in society.
• We received positive feedback such as "I was only interested in pure science, but I learned that ethical considerations are also very important for the development of synthetic biology, and this was a good opportunity for me to think about such issues on my own for the first time."
• By learning about the actual project, the image of synthetic biology and iGEM seemed to have become more concrete, and some of them said, "I want to participate in iGEM at university!" and some of them actually started participating in iGEM at iGEM Ninjas, which is a high school team for iGEM.

Impact

In this educational activity, we successfully introduced participants to the funs of synthetic biology and iGEM. We were also able to increase their understanding of related technologies and biosafety, and alleviate their negative image towards genetic modification. We also learned a lot from the feedback of this event, which we applied to our later educational activities. For example, many participants found that synthetic biology was interesting, and they shared positive opinions on synthetic biology in the discussions, so we came to think that there were many people who were potentially interested in synthetic biology and that we could attract more people by providing more opportunities to learn about it. This idea led us to increase the number of educational activities after May, and as a result, we succeeded in involving a large number of people. Furthermore, we realized the importance of having participants think for themselves and share their opinions through discussions. Therefore, we decided to incorporate discussions in our latter educational event, "Summer Synbio Course", and other activities. A notable aspect of this educational activity was that one student decided to join Ninjas, a Japanese high school student team planning to participate in iGEM 2023, after participating in this online event and the subsequent "Summer Synbio Course." He is interested in the many things that can be achieved with synthetic biology and in shaping them into something useful for society. We have kept in touch with him after the educational event and decided to continue cooperating with him since he told us about the various challenges he faced in the team.

We are very happy that a student has started iGEM activities through our educational activities. This is a good example of how we contribute to expanding the circle of synthetic biology. From next year onward, we promised to work together with science museums on educational activities such as lectures to expand the circle of synthetic biology and iGEM.

Contacting high school students who joined iGEM Ninjas on zoom:

Other educational activities

Education at the May Festival

ATP Battle

Target

The participants of the May Festival, which is a festival held every year at the University of Tokyo.

Purpose

We exhibited a card game, named "ATP Battle" at the UTokyo's school festival, and had the participants play with it. Participants, ranging from elementary school students to adults who have never experienced synthetic biology, enjoyed experiencing a part of designing gene circuits through the ATP Battle, in which the aim is to produce as much ATP as possible by assembling genetic circuits with various cards that resemble BioBricks.

Educational Materials

We created an original card game where players can experience the basics of synthetic biology, named "ATP Battle." Here is the rulebook for ATP Battle.

Contents

Before playing the game, we explained the general information of the game, such as what promoters and genes are, as well as the basics of synthetic biology using the slides. Participants were then divided into groups of four to listen to explanations from iGEM members and actually play the ATP Battle.

Feedback

We conducted a survey on twitter, and 75% (33) of the 44 respondents who played the game said they would purchase the game if it were on sale.

Impact

There were several small children among those who actually played ATP Battle. The children tended to understand the rules of the game faster than the accompanying adults and they enjoyed playing the game. This suggests that our game, ATP Battle, can help children enjoyably and effectively understand the mechanism of promoters activated by lights and proteins produced from genes.

The lecture at Hachilab

Target

We taught elementary and junior high school students who are interested in biology about the fun, possibilities, and ethical code of synthetic biology.

Purpose

Currently, it is common in Japanese high schools for students to choose two of four science subjects (physics, chemistry, biology, and geology) to study if they wish to pursue a science course. While more than 70% of students choose the pair of physics and chemistry, less than 30% choose biology. This data indicates that biology is unpopular [1]. One reason for this may be that molecular biology, which becomes a central subject after entering high school, is not familiar to students and is strongly perceived as a subject to be memorized.

By allowing students interested in biology to experience the fun of synthetic biology from an early age, we hoped to spread the idea that biology is not just about memorization, and that they can design their own organisms from an engineering perspective. We believed that by conducting an educational activity for elementary and junior high school students, we could broaden the range of people who are interested in synthetic biology.

The ethical code that is unavoidable in the study of synthetic biology is an important issue in science generally, not just in biology. This is an issue that must always be considered by those who study science and live in today's scientifically and technologically advanced society. We thought that learning about research ethics through synthetic biology would also provide an opportunity for elementary and junior high school students who participated in the lecture to think about technology in society.

Educational Materials

A worksheet was created to explain DNA expression. With this, the participants could enjoy transcribing and translating DNA sequences with their own hands. We wanted to convey the fun of biology that goes beyond memorization, so we made it possible for students to understand the mechanisms of biology by working with their own hands. We added detailed explanations so that even elementary school students could understand. This worksheet can be used as an educational material in schools as well.

This lecture was also distributed on YouTube, where it has been archived. It has been viewed more than 500 times, which suggests that this lecture itself has been widely used as educational material. This video is intended to convey the appeal of synthetic biology to those who know little or nothing about it.

Contents

The lecture consisted of three parts: an experiment on DNA extraction using chicken liver, hands-on experience with gene expression using worksheets, and an introduction to synthetic biology and its code of ethics. The focus was on the experiments and worksheets because we wanted the participants to actually see and feel the biological phenomena by seeing and working with their hands, rather than simply teaching the facts. By looking at the extracted DNA, the students understood what DNA is, and by using the worksheets, they learned how transcription and translation occur from DNA to realize cellular functions. They also looked into the world of synthetic biology, which involves modifying this process, and to some of the ethical norms that accompany it. The flow of the lecture

• What is synthetic biology?
• What is DNA?
• What does DNA look like? - DNA extraction experiment using chicken liver
• What is central dogma?
• How do transcription and translation go on? - Hands-on experience using a worksheet
• How is gene expression regulated?
• Reconsider: what is synthetic biology?
• What is research ethics?

Feedback

At the beginning of the lecture, all eight participants had never heard of synthetic biology, but in a post-lecture questionnaire, all responded that the lecture was interesting. In particular, many of them answered that they enjoyed seeing actual DNA in the DNA extraction experiment. This answer indicates that they were able to actually see and feel DNA, which before they had only recognized as jargon in textbooks. They also actively engaged with the worksheets. Although the lecture was given at a somewhat high level, they could understand and enjoy the content.

Impact

The experience of learning about biology and synthetic biology in an enjoyable way for elementary and junior high school students who had never heard of synthetic biology will be the starting point for further interest in synthetic biology in the future. Some of the participants had heard about this lecture from their family members, which means that not only children but also their parents were interested in this lecture. This educational activity was also streamed on YouTube, so parents and children can watch the streaming together. We strongly believe that this lecture increased the knowledge and interest of both children and their parents in synthetic biology while the children enjoyed learning about synthetic biology and its related fields.

References

[1] National Centre for University Entrance Examinations. [大学入試センター]. (2022). Reiwa yonenn daigaku nyugaku kyotu tesuto jissikekka no gaiyou [令和４年度大学入学共通テスト実施結果の概要] https://www.dnc.ac.jp/kyotsu/kako_shiken_jouhou/r4/r4.html (accessed Spt. 23, 2022)

The lecture at Summer Synbio Course

GenochemyCollaboration

The same lecture as above Use Case 2. Here, we focus more on aspects of this lecture other than Genochemy.

Purpose

The overall goal of the course was to have the participants obtain a deeper understanding of synthetic biology.

Based on the fact that, through previous educational experience, many participants had an interest in synthetic biology but felt hurdles due to a lack of basic knowledge about biology, such as not having completed the high school biology curriculum, so we planned to include the basics of biology in this course. We tried to provide a step-by-step explanation of what synthetic biology is and specific examples of its use, as well as to give the students an overall picture of the field of synthetic biology. In addition to introducing the content of the iGEM project, the lecture also introduced how the project is carried out and how it solves problems, so that the participants could familiarize themselves with iGEM. The lecture also provided participants with hands-on work, so that they could have a deeper understanding compared to just hearing about it.

Educational Materials

The course had the following contents: the basics of biology, what synthetic biology is, and examples of iGEM projects. We used the slides below.

The course used Genochemy (v0.2), a tool we developed to have the participants experience synthetic biology as if it were a game. The link to this tool was distributed to the participants so that they could play it after the lecture as well as review the information they learned.

The workshop was designed to encourage participants to discuss and think about how synthetic biology can be used to achieve each of the SDGs.

Contents

The lecture was co-hosted by the UTokyo and Waseda_Tokyo teams as a three-hour project on Zoom, inviting participants via Twitter and Instagram. Main flow:

• Basics of biology necessary for understanding synthetic biology (DNA structure, transcription, translation, central dogma, model organisms, etc. were explained).
• What is synthetic biology? (Origins, concepts, scientific and engineering perspectives, etc. were explained.)
• Let's experience synthetic biology through Genochemy! (Work: After explaining the use and functions of Genochemy, questions were posed and participants were asked to solve them.)
• Practical examples of synthetic biology from iGEM team activities (this year's projects at UTokyo and Waseda-Tokyo, and four related projects from the past were introduced. We also explained the basic way of proceeding with iGEM projects.)
• Synthetic biology as a solution to social issues related to the SDGs (Work: Participants were divided into small groups and asked to devise and present a solution to an issue related to the SDGs using a worksheet together with an iGEM team member facilitator).

Feedback

Nine people attended the course that day. Feedback questionnaires were obtained from five of them.

Participants also commented that the hands-on workshop part was effective in helping them experience synthetic biology, and that hearing the introduction of the iGEM project, including how the project is being carried out, gave them a better understanding of how to solve problems through synthetic biology.

As a result of group work to consider solutions to SDG challenges from the perspective of synthetic biology, the following ideas were raised by participants.

Group1

• Simpler and more efficient photosynthetic bacteria.
• Bacteria that absorb and detoxify harmful substances.
• Bacteria that make usable oil from materials not normally used by humans.

Target: 13 Climate action, 14 Life below water, 15 Life on land

Group2

• Micro-organisms that break down foodstuffs that would normally be discarded such as seeds , into edible forms or energy.
• This is effective in eliminating food loss.

Target: 2 Zero hunger, 3 Good health and well-being, 7 Affordable and clean energy

Impact

The questionnaire results showed that all participants were satisfied with the lecture and felt that their understanding of synthetic biology had been deepened. From this, we believe that the objective of the course, which was to give the participants an overall understanding of synthetic biology, has been achieved. When asked in the post-lecture questionnaire whether they were for or against synthetic biology research in light of the risks, as shown in the diagram below, the majority of the participants were positive about promoting research. We believe that this is a result of our lectures which conveyed the potential for future development in this field, in addition to providing an understanding of the mechanisms of synthetic biology.

A questionnaire was completed after the group work on the SDGs from the perspective of synthetic biology, which yielded the results shown in the figure below. This section succeeded in deepening the participants' understanding of the SDGs as well as synthetic biology.

The introduction of the iGEM project also allowed us to convey the concept of problem-solving in synthetic biology.

We succeeded in conveying that this year's iGEM UTokyo project, which was given as a concrete example of synthetic biology during the lecture, responds to the specific needs of the present and future, and has a significant impact on society.

The lecture at Japan Biology Olympiad

Collaboration

Target

Japan Biology Olympiad (JBO) is a contest in which junior and senior high school students from all over Japan compete in solving biology problems. The top 2% of the students who made it through the preliminary rounds went to the finals.

For these very talented biology students, an online event was held with several iGEM teams to introduce them to iGEM. There were 26 participants, including the Japanese representatives of the International Biology Olympiad.

Purpose

The purpose of this event was to introduce iGEM to outstanding biology students so that they can learn about iGEM and become future leaders of synthetic biology and to introduce specific projects of Japanese iGEM teams to them so that they can realize that the biology they are learning can actually be what we can use to solve social problems.

Educational Materials

We shared the information using slides.

Contents

After explaining what iGEM is, the participating iGEM teams (iGEM UTokyo, iGEM Tokyo Tech, iGEM Qdai, iGEM Tsukuba) explained their projects in turn.

Since the students had a basic knowledge of biology, we explained the project's deeper technical aspects so they could experience the advanced applications of the technology. UTokyo team introduced some specific gene circuits and the function of photoreceptors and recombinases.

We then broke into breakout rooms where participants could ask questions and interact with each other on a project-by-project basis.

Feedback

Some students expressed a desire to use synthetic biology to solve social problems such as oil spills into the ocean, desertification, and microplastics. It was found that even students with a background in biology did not know a lot about iGEM or synthetic biology. Another 35% of the students had heard of it but did not know what it meant. However, after the lecture, more than 95% of the participants said they found the event interesting, and 60% of the students said they would like to participate in iGEM in the future.

Impact

Because of the excellent group of students, there were many sharp questions. For example, there was a question about iGEM Qdai's methane production project and its relevance to the greenhouse effect of methane. Through our interactions with the students, there were some learning moments for us as well.

Out of the students who participated, 71.4% had either never heard of synthetic biology or had heard of it but did not know what it was about. Given this level of recognition, even among students with a background in biology, it is necessary to first let people know the existence of synthetic biology in order to promote its spread in society. We were pleased that many students wanted to join iGEM after the event. Some students even asked how they could join an iGEM team, which suggests that iGEM was attractive to them. This event was significant in that it provided an opportunity for young students, who are expected to lead the biology field in Japan, to learn about synthetic biology.

Educational Materials

Genochemy Link: Here

Other Educational Materials: You can download and use them!

Summer Synbio Course Slides:

ATP Battle Rule Book: