Communication | William_and_Mary

Because of the importance of integrating new voices into synthetic biology and inspiring the next generation of researchers, our team has created numerous educational materials and hosted several educational events this year. Our goal was to introduce the importance and potential of fieldable synthetic biology to our target audiences, especially future generations. We targeted audiences ranging from middle schoolers and high schoolers, college students, alumni, and current synthetic biologists. Our main education deliverable [1] is our Re-Terraforming Earth board game which we tested with two different target audiences and incorporated feedback and assessment results into our final product, along with an expansion pack for the pre-existing Terraforming Mars board game.

Other educational materials include [2] a comprehensive literature review on chassis selection targeted towards academics in the field, [3] a synthetic biology informational booklet with information and advice for young students as well as teachers looking to get involved in synthetic biology, [4] a video introduction to chassis, and [5] a synthetic biology storybook. We also [6] hosted a number of engaging events throughout the season, including but not limited to teaching children how to perform a gel electrophoresis, grouping middle schoolers into a human circuit to educate them about synbio parts, and giving tours of our lab. Finally, [7] we participated in several small collaborations with other teams in order to assist them with their educational materials.

Our Impact

Synthetic Biology Board Games

Re-Terraforming Earth

General Overview and Educational Goals:

The game Terraforming Mars imagines the players as making Mars a livable planet. It was designed by Jacob Fryxelius (with graphic design by Isaac Fryxelius, and artwork by Isaac Fryxelius and Daniel Fryxelius). We reimagined this game to focus on RE-Terraforming Earth. Our version of the game is centered around making Earth livable again (decreasing pollution, decreasing greenhouse gas production, and increasing food security) through the use of synthetic biology. It is accessible and is linked below as a PDF to download, print, and play.

The main target audience for this game is middle school and high school students. The educational goals of this game include:

Introducing the field of synthetic biology
Introducing the parts of a genetic circuit
Introducing the concept of a chassis
Introducing the concept of chassis selection
Providing examples of global issues that synthetic biology can help to address
Addressing some of the safety and ethical concerns within the field of synthetic biology
Providing a game that is engaging to students and challenges them to think critically about synthetic biology as a field that has the potential to help address global issues, but also comes with major safety and ethical questions, concerns and responsibilities

Download Game Materials Below

Game Boards link.
Instructions link.
Game Cards link.

Evaluation of Educational Impact:

Evaluation with High School Students
- We evaluated the educational impact of our game by asking a group of local high school students to take a brief, anonymous assessment on synthetic biology and chassis selection before and after playing the game. This assessment involved students being randomly assigned a number which was used to track progress on the individual level. Before reading the game’s instructions manual, the students were asked to take the pre-assessment. After reading some of the background information on synthetic biology and genetic circuits listed in the game’s instructions manual, the students were given a general overview of the key rules and objectives of the game. Then, they began to play the game in groups, while members of our team walked around to answer any questions. After the conclusion of the game, the students were asked to complete a post-assessment and provide feedback based on their experience playing the game.
- Select results of these pre- and post-assessments are summarized below:
  - The game was most successful at teaching students about the parts of a synthetic biology circuit, as students had to collect these parts in order to assemble circuits in the game. On the pre-quiz, none of the 15 students could name a single part of a synthetic circuit (average of 0), but on the post-quiz, an average of 3.6/4 parts were named. It is worth noting that misspellings or variations of words were counted as correct (such as students putting ‘coder’ instead of ‘coding region’), and also that the incorrect inclusion of ‘chassis’ as part of the circuit did not affect their score.
  - At the onset of the game, 14 out of 15 students felt either neutral or positive about synthetic biology, with 1 student believing synthetic biology is bad because “it disrupts the natural order and is therefore out of place”. After the game, all 15 students felt either positively or neutral about synthetic biology, with the aforementioned student writing, “It can be useful to fix issues we have created”.
  - The most common criticisms of the game were that, while it was fun, it was too confusing and thus took too long to understand, so they didn’t have enough time to fully play the game. We went on to incorporate this feedback as outlined later on this page by creating a shorter and simpler alternate version of the game to be used in a classroom setting.
- While watching the students play, we felt that they were engaged and having fun. One student came up to us afterwards and asked for our contact information, and has since contacted us asking for a copy of the game to play with her family, which we are in the process of getting to her. We were really excited to receive that level of positive feedback. However, we also noticed while watching them play that it took them longer to understand the rules than we anticipated, so we were not surprised when the feedback section of the assessment forms indicated that many students found the game confusing. Pleased with the overall concept of the game, we decided to continue testing this game but to begin working on a simpler version as well.
Evaluation with College Students
- We also wanted to test our game with students with some background knowledge of synthetic biology, so we brought the game to William and Mary’s ‘Bioengineering and Synthetic Biology’ course during one of their class sessions. Since they had substantial prior knowledge of synthetic biology parts, we opted to not assess the game with a pre- and post- test, but instead with a feedback form that the 20 students filled out during and after playing our game.
- Below are select quotes by biology students about the educational impact of the game:
  - “I learned about many different ways that synbio could change the world”
  - “It’s a great model for people to learn the circuit parts and the existing synbio project”
  - “I learned that certain chassis don’t work with certain parts"
- Below is a list of common constructive feedback themes:
  - There was conflicting feedback on the complexity of the game, with many students noting they found the game confusing and too complicated, but with some students noting they did not think the game was overcomplicated at all. Because of the mixed results, our team has decided to keep this version of the game as a more comprehensive, longer version, and also create an alternative version that is simpler and quicker. Students also mentioned wanting a simplified sheet they could keep in front of them at all times with an abridged explanation of rules and symbols. We plan on implementing this sheet into future iterations of the game. Additionally, we have already added more images into our instructions manual in order to make the instructions more clear.
  - One of the groups told us that they decided to change the rules while playing in order to make circuit formation easier, and did so by selling each other circuit parts so that it was easier to assemble a complete circuit. They noted that this made the game more collaborative. We liked this idea, and decided to incorporate it into our more simple model of the game that is intended for the classroom environment.
  - Students noted some points of confusion, like how sometimes Re-Terraforming Points was referred to as both “RT” and “RP”. We have fixed these inconsistencies in our uploaded materials.

For a detailed explanation of Game Objectives and Instructions

As in the original game, the main objective of Re-Terraforming Earth is to achieve the goals set for all three global parameters. In this game, the three global parameters chosen by our team members include: 1) decreasing greenhouse gases, 2) increasing food security, and 3) decreasing pollution. A quantifiable goal is defined for each global parameter. Each player can contribute to the achievement of these goals by playing cards that result in a decrease in greenhouse gases, an increase in food security, and/or a decrease in pollution.

In this game, players can buy or play cards from four main groups of cards: BioBrick cards (light green border), Chassis cards (dark green border), Circuit-dependent cards (blue border), Circuit-independent cards (gray border), and Play Immediately cards (red border).

BioBrick cards contain one of the four main parts of a genetic circuit: promoters, ribosome binding sites (RBSs), coding regions, and terminators
Chassis cards contain information about different organisms, or chassis, that can be engineered by genetic circuits
Circuit-dependent cards require a circuit to be played on the board before they can be used
Circuit-independent cards are not directly related to genetic circuits and do not require a circuit to be on the board in order to be played — they often involve solutions outside of synthetic biology.
Play Immediately cards pertain to events out of the player’s control, and must be played as soon as the player draws the card.

Each card that is played may either increase or decrease players’ re-terraforming scores and/or number of donor appeasibility points, as well as increase or decrease one or more of the global parameters. A player’s re-terraforming score increases each time that player contributes to the accomplishment of one of the three main goals of the game: decreasing greenhouse gases, decreasing pollution, or increasing food security. The game is won by the player who gains the highest re-terraforming score, in addition to any bonus points they may have gained from awards.

There are two different types of awards that players may win after the game is complete:

Circuit Creation Award: The player who has the most circuits on the board earns the Circuit Creation Award and receives 5 bonus points
Safety Award: The player with the highest number of donor appeasibility points earns the Safety Award and receives 5 bonus points

BioBrick cards can be used by players to create circuits, which increase at least one global parameter along with the re-terraforming score of the player who creates the circuit for that turn. To make a circuit, a player will need to collect these four BioBrick cards: a promoter, an RBS, a coding region, and a terminator. All four BioBrick cards must be played with a compatible Chassis card. After collecting these four BioBrick cards and a compatible Chassis card, players can then place a circuit tile on the board. These five cards can be played at once as one move.

When designing this game, members of our team aimed to include a variety of synthetic biology applications that addressed major world problems. To do so, we included a range of different coding region cards and chassis cards.

Examples of coding region cards we included are:

pETase coding region for degrading microplastics using bacteria
Nitrogen fixation coding region for decreasing use of agricultural fertilizers
Spider silk protein coding region for more sustainable textile production
Milk protein coding region for creating cow-free dairy products
Bioenergy production coding region for creating biofuel
Mercury biosensing coding region for detecting contamination in water sources

Examples of chassis cards we included are:

Bacillus subtilis - bacterial chassis, compatible with soil biome
Zea mays - agricultural chassis, compatible with soil biome
Bacillariophyceae - algal chassis, compatible with marine biome
Saccharomyces cerevisiae - yeast chassis, compatible with soil and manufacturing biomes
Escherichia coli - bacterial chassis, compatible with manufacturing biome
Cyanobacteria - bacterial chassis, compatible with marine biome
Pseudomonas putida - bacterial chassis, compatible with soil and marine biomes

For even more information about the game, please download our instructional manual linked above.

Incorporation of Chassis Selection

Incorporation of Safety and Ethics

Future Plans for This Game

In line with the feedback we received from both assessment sessions, we have decided to create an alternative version of this game that is simpler to understand and quicker to play so that it is able to be completed within a typical class timeframe, and is more appropriate for younger audiences. Some ideas we have, which largely are based in our feedback, are:

Allowing more intensive collaboration between players: Players can trade cards in order to collaboratively form circuits.
Elimination of the Donor Appeasibility Track
Alternative board with less tracks in the parameter trackers so that the game can be won more quickly.

Terraforming Mars Expansion Pack

In addition to developing our board game, we also designed an expansion pack for the game Terraforming Mars developed by Jacob Fryxelius (with graphic design by Isaac Fryxelius, and artwork by Isaac Fryxelius and Daniel Fryxelius). An expansion pack supplements an already existing game and typically adds new concepts. This expansion pack incorporates aspects of synthetic biology circuit design and chassis selection into the original game. It is easily accessible and can be downloaded for free off of our wiki.

Concepts that Are Learned Through our Game:

Importance of Synthetic Biology and its potential
Importance of Chassis Selection to Implementing Synthetic biology systems
Differences in Part Strengths

Download Game Materials Below:

Game Cards link
Instructions Part 1 link.
Instructions Part 2 link.
Other Materials link.

How It Works:

Chassis Selection Literature Review

We have created a comprehensive chassis selection literature review targeted towards synthetic biologists. The purpose of our review is to survey how chassis selection has evolved in synthetic biology, and to convey the dire necessity for the field to develop a systematic approach for choosing a chassis, particularly in order to make synthetic biology more fieldable. The future of fieldable synthetic biology will depend on high-throughput sequencing of microorganisms and computational tools that aid researchers in selecting a chassis - thus, this review emphasizes the importance of computer science and data science to synthetic biology. Increased incorporation of computation into synthetic biology will allow researchers to characterize genetic parts compatible with different organisms and ultimately engineer bacteria that suit their purposes instead of defaulting to model organisms. To read our literature review, click this link.

Educational Booklet as an Introduction to SynBio

Our Educational Booklet, titled SynBio and You, explains the field of Synthetic Biology at a level appropriate to a middle to high school age group. Specifically, it teaches students the basics of the biology and computation that goes into Synthetic Biology, puts those ideas in the context of real-life applications, and explains the issues regarding the future of the field. It encourages students to get involved in Synthetic Biology, through their own personal research and seek out learning experiences. The booklet concludes with some ideas for teachers to get their students interested in SynBio, through interactive learning, such as with the Re-Terraforming Earth game that William & Mary iGEM designed.

Open the files below for the Booklet and images for a referenced activity:

link to Booklet
link to images to cut-out of circuit parts

Chassis Selection Video

Our team created an educational video on chassis selection as part of an educational video collection as a collaboration with Johns Hopkins and East Coast BioCrew’s iGEM teams. Our chassis selection video defines the Central Dogma of Biology, describes synthetic biology, defines a chassis in the context of synthetic biology, provides examples of chassis, and explains the importance of effective chassis selection, especially in relation to the development of fieldable synthetic biology systems. It explains why ‘fieldable’ chassis selection is currently so difficult, and also discusses the role of computational tools in addressing major roadblocks to fieldability. This video is available below.

Synthetic Biology Storybook

Another education deliverable created by our team was inspired by an idea from the collaboration workshop we attended at this year’s MidAtlantic Meetup. Our team developed a picture book to introduce the general concept of synthetic biology to young children. The main character of the story, Rumi, uses a microscope to observe bacteria, and readers are taken on a journey where they observe bacteria in multiple settings, such as soil, water, and air. The general concept of DNA is introduced through the story as well, which explains how the DNA of bacterial cells is different from that of other organisms. Examples are given to demonstrate how engineering bacterial DNA can provide bacteria with new, useful abilities such as the ability to fluoresce, the ability to remediate water sources, and the ability to counter viral infections.

Download Our Synthetic Biology Storybook Below:

To download our storybook, please click here.

Bioengineering Education Events:

Synbio Field Trip with Camp EAGER
- We hosted camp EAGER for part of their field trip to William and Mary. Camp EAGER is a program run through the William and Mary School of Education in which students underrepresented in STEM, particularly young girls and students of color, are encouraged to pursue STEM fields. For our time with these middle and high school students, we gave a tour of our lab and demonstrated how to use some of our equipment. We also had the students go out into the hallway and group themselves into a human circuit. Students took on the roles of different parts of a circuit, and transformed themselves as a plasmid into our circuit of students taking on the role of a cell.

Teaching a high school class how to perform gel electrophoresis
- We partnered with a local high school to teach a group of students about gel electrophoresis. Notably, we taught them how to load a gel, run a gel, and how to interpret the results to this assay.

W&M Women's Weekend - ISC Tour
- For Women’s Weekend this year, William & Mary held a tour of the Integrated Science Center (ISC), in which the Applied Science, Biology, Chemistry, Data Science, Neuroscience, and Psychological Sciences departments are located. As part of this tour, some of our team members gave a brief presentation introducing synthetic biology and iGEM, and provided a general overview of our project this year. We also demonstrated how to use a plate reader to measure the fluorescence of bacteria. Attendees were all female-identifying alumni of the college.

SynBio Cookie and Kahoot Event at W&M
- In order to encourage STEM students at our colleges to take advantage of synbio opportunities at William and Mary, and to celebrate the launch of our brand new ‘bioengineering’ minor, our team gave a presentation of synthetic biology concepts and opportunities at the Integrated Science Center. This event included cookie circuit making, for which students were taught about synbio parts and, given a key with different candies representing different parts, asked to make a circuit on a sugar cookie. The event culminated with a Kahoot competition. Kahoot is a competitive online quiz, and students present competed against each other in this fun environment to see who was most knowledgeable about synthetic biology.

BioMath event
- We presented at our University’s BioMath Journal Club to educate students and professors about the field of synthetic biology. During this presentation, we gave a brief overview of synthetic biology and explained our project, with a specific focus on our mathematical modeling. After our presentation, we fielded questions from the audience and received feedback on our presentation.

Data Science Presentation To Investors
- To demonstrate the importance of data science to synthetic biology and to illustrate the data science research being performed at William & Mary, our team presented our project to the Hampton Roads Alliance and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. During this presentation, we explained basic principles of synthetic biology, our project idea, and how we used data science to advance our research.

Collaborations

We contributed a submission to two other education books being made by other iGEM teams.

iGEM teams from McGill (Canada), Cornell (United States), and Queens (Canada) co-designed an educational picture book about bacteria, and asked other iGEM teams to help them create it by describing their favorite microbe. In order to raise awareness about synthetic biology’s amazing potential to remediate environmental pollutants, we submitted information about our favorite soil bacteria: Pseudomonas putida. We highlighted P. putida’s ability to degrade detrimental compounds, such as crude oil, and survive in antagonistic environments, which is part of what makes it such a promising chassis. We chose to participate in this collaboration because we hope that educational materials introducing students to the wide range of applications of bacteria will generate interest towards the field of synthetic biology, and to emphasize the potential for environmental bioremediation through the use of bacteria.
iGEM team MIT MAHE (India) proposed a collaboration for the assembly of a Geo Book, or global seafood cookbook highlighting local ecosystems and cuisine, and invited teams around the world to highlight a dish important to their culture. Ultimately, this project aims to educate the public about unsustainable practices pertaining to aquatic organisms and ecosystems. We submitted information about Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica), which are a native species in the Chesapeake Bay, located in Virginia. Eastern oysters have a crucial role economically, culturally, and environmentally in this region. However, the Eastern oyster population has experienced a major decrease due to overfishing, disease, and pollution. In completing this collaboration, we hope to propagate information about the important role that Eastern oysters play in our community, while also promoting their restoration as an issue that could potentially be addressed through synthetic biology.

Conclusion

The combination of inspiring the next generation and informing current synthetic biologists, our education and outreach is integral to our goal of moving synbio out of the lab and into practice to solve world issues. It highlights the importance of computation to the future of the field through the BioMath event, literature review, and Women’s Weekend event as well as introducing the importance of synthetic biology to students.

Education & Communication