At the end of primary school, children already have some understanding about specific topics like biology and geography. Therefore, to arouse their curiosity even more, we have set up a workshop at a science morning. Here kids from the age of eight to twelve were motivated to learn about science. The workshop consisted of a small lecture, followed by a practical where they brought this knowledge into practice. We taught the kids about DNA and how we can engineer bacteria in a beneficial way. The whole class was enthusiastic and asked many questions, like: Are bacteria always bad? How big are bacteria? Or in what are bacteria present? We looked at several things under the microscope, including some kids’ own cells from the inside of their cheek.
After the lecture, it was time for the children to see DNA with their own eyes. They performed a practical in which they extracted their own DNA out of saliva, and that of strawberries. This workshop has been made public and is distributed through Ekoli vzw, a platform that provides science workshops at schools. If you want to try these experiments yourself, check out our protocol below!
In secondary school, students are expected to have a better idea of what they are interested in. After a few years in high school, they need to choose a direction of interest, so they can prepare for their future. We gave a lecture to a group of 16- to 17-year-old students in their biology class, on the verge of making the choices for their time after high school. The teacher asked us to challenge the students, so they could experience what a university lecture would be like. Therefore, we gave an in-depth presentation about synthetic biology aiming to extend their normal curriculum and to inspire them about this field. Highlighted subjects were the differences between breeding, random mutagenesis, and targeted genome engineering. Furthermore, plasmid expression and genome integration were explained. We ended our lecture by elaborating on common gene editing techniques, like transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), zinc finger nucleases, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-Cas and the homologous recombination that is essential for all three. After the synthetic biology lecture, we explained our iGEM project “Colourectal” to emphasize the possibilities that we can get as a student. We hope to inspire the students to participate in competitions like iGEM.
The lecture triggered a lot of enthusiastic questions about our project and about the possibilities of synthetic biology in real life applications. We observed an open attitude towards biological innovation. Furthermore, several students mentioned that they were inspired by the lecture and were thinking about starting a study in the field of synthetic biology.
University students have already chosen a field of study. Therefore, we chose to educate students on the fields surrounding science. Here we gave a lecture about the possibilities as a student to do a student challenge, such as iGEM. In a student challenge, you can learn to work together in a team and have direct exposure to the entrepreneurial mindset. Additionally, we showed the students how to talk to stakeholders about innovation and the importance of Human Practices.
Entrepreneurship lunch lecture
First, we gave a lunch lecture at the University, to students and professors from a range of disciplines. This lecture was focussed on inspiring students about the possibilities to participate in student challenges at Wageningen University. These challenges stimulate students to develop innovative and clever projects for real world problems. We invited two more teams from our university to present their challenges. The Wageningen team SenseWURk took part in the National SensUs competition in which they were developing a biosensor for sepsis detection. Team Berooted participated in the Urban Greenhouse Challenge where teams try to create a holistic and sustainable design for a community garden in Washington DC.
During our presentation we spoke in detail about the iGEM competition, the values of the competition and our project. To further stimulate and educate students, we also made an entrepreneurial guide where we provide useful information to create a successful start-up gathered by interviewing a successful start-up owner and companies that help start-ups in growing their business. We distributed this guide through the coordinators of the student challenges in Wageningen.
Human Practices lecture
Our second lecture at Wageningen University was during the ‘Responsibility and Reflection in Molecular Life Sciences’ course. This course is for students that are starting their Bachelor thesis in the field of Molecular Life Sciences. It stimulates students to reflect on their own ethical and scientific commitments and on norms of good scientific conduct. We organized a lecture on Human Practices to show the students how important it is to interact with the world around them when designing a responsible project. During the lecture we presented the project we originally had at the beginning of iGEM and explained how such a project could be improved through human practices. We walked the students through the process of change that our project continuously underwent due to engagement with different stakeholders from academia or society. By ending with our current plan, we showed them the positive impact of Human Practices. We taught the students how to create a project that is adapted to the needs and wishes of the users as well as to the world in which the plan should be implemented.
By giving tailored lectures and workshops about the exciting field of synthetic biology, we hope to inspire the next generation of students at every step of the educational ladder. During these events we observed great enthusiasm and some students already showed interest in a future in our field. Additionally, we observed a positive opinion about synthetic biology. This could mean that future generations have a more open opinion about using GMOs for societal applications.
Additionally, we have spread our project through the network of Wageningen University, by publishing both an article in the university magazine as well as on their website . We were also guests in a podcast from SynBioNL , where we spoke about our experiences in the iGEM competition and our project specifically. Through this podcast, we wanted to help promote iGEM within the synthetic biology community of the Netherlands.
Lastly, we made a health-promoting cookbook together with the BalanceBuddy foundation, which supports overweight children by creating a healthy lifestyle. With this cookbook we aim to educate people about the risks associated with colorectal cancer and about creating a healthy lifestyle that contributes to decreasing these risks. By collecting easy and affordable recipes as well as publishing the cookbook as open source, we made it available for as many people as possible. To bring awareness to our book we organized a launch, open to everyone who wanted to join. Here, we presented our cookbook, had a lecture about health and cancer by dr. Dieuwertje Kok and introduced the listeners to the topic of synthetic biology and our project. After the launch, there was a discussion hour where we spoke with people about our project, health, and synthetic biology.
During our project, we wanted to reach out to as many stakeholders as possible. To achieve this, we used our social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Here, we posted updates on our project, educational information about colorectal cancer and events that we attended or organized. Examples of these events were the European meet-up in Hamburg and the Dutch meet-up in Utrecht that we co-organized with team Eindhoven . In this way we tried to educate people about the world-wide problem of colorectal cancer, while inspiring them about our possible solution, Colourectal.