Inclusivity

Developing Software to Help Researchers Design Inclusive Therapeutics:

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There is a growing number of constructs being designed for use in the gut, such as novel drug-delivery systems or new oncological treatments. While these therapeutics hold great promise, there are still issues that need to be solved in terms of clinical trials. Often, the test groups chosen for these trials are not representative of the actual population, resulting in incomplete testing. Most clinical trial subjects are white males (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022). While strides are being made in this area, oncological, cardiovascular, and ophthalmological trials are still largely lacking in representation of ethinic minorities and women (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022). As individuals can have different reactions to the same therapeutic, it is necessary that therapeutics are adequately tested in people of both biological sexes and all ethnicities. In addition to adequate testing in these populations, it is also necessary that these therapeutics function correctly in many different people. Our team wanted to find a way to help researchers choose a chassis for their gut therapeutics that will survive in a wide range of gut environments, including those of people of different ages, countries of origin, and sexes. This wide range of effectiveness will increase the number of people who are able to use this therapeutic and ultimately, positively impact more people.

While our software allows researchers to investigate chassis for four different environments, the gut environment aspect is unique as it is designed to help researchers develop more inclusive therapeutics. Our software helps researchers select a chassis that is present in a wide range of different gut microbiomes. For each demographic category, age, country of origin, sex, or BMI, researchers can choose their parameters. For example, they could set age to 40-50 and sex to female. The software program then searches across all of the samples that meet these characteristics and returns the 10 most dominant bacterial species and genuses across these samples. This tool allows researchers to find chassis that are widely inclusive across humans, or within a categorical group of people, while also being specific to the limits or needs of their genetic system.

To build this software, we searched for published data sets, specifically looking for studies that sequenced participant’s gut microbiomes and provided abundance readings from the 16S data. As we are not authorized to work with human samples ourselves, we were limited to the demographic information about participants collected by other researchers, but found the most commonly included information to be age, biological sex, country of residence, and BMI. To facilitate chassis selection for a wide range of gut environments, we took care to include published data sets that took samples in many different countries, from biological males and females, from people aged from under five to over 100 years old, and from people with BMI ranging from less than 19 to over 45. While we acknowledge that recorded sex and BMI may not accurately represent an individual’s gender or health status respectively, these were the only indicators given of sex/gender and weight in the studies we found. With this software, researchers will be able to design gut therapeutics that work in a wide range of individual’s guts, regardless of age, sex, BMI, or country of origin.

Hosting Events for Underrepresented Groups in the Sciences:

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Equal access to scientific education was incredibly important to our team and we wanted to ensure that we addressed this issue throughout our project. While we developed many different low-cost education materials (please see below for more information), we all agree that conducting in-person scientific events is the best way to engage people and excite them about science. We hosted three events to introduce individuals of all ages to the concepts of biology, computation, and scientific research in general.

For our first two events, we invited a group from a local high school to our campus for a demonstration of the gel electrophoresis process. We explained to them how gel electrophoresis works, why it is used, and how to interpret its results. After presenting an overview of this process, we taught students how to use a pipetman and helped them to load gels themselves. Students were then introduced to a gel electrophoresis power source and were able to watch their gels run. After imaging, the students interpreted the results of their gel and were able to determine the length of their DNA strand. By hosting this event over two days, we were able to introduce around 40 high-school aged students to a technique and equipment that they would not have experienced otherwise.

In addition to hosting a gel-electrophoresis focused event, we also invited Camp EAGER to visit our laboratory and learn about synthetic biology. Camp EAGER is a summer camp dedicated to STEM education for middle school students from groups that are underrepresented in the sciences. For this educational event, we both gave roughly 200 students a tour of our laboratory and led them through an educational activity. In the laboratory, we introduced the students to multiple pieces of equipment, including a centrifuge, a pipetman, a plate reader, and an incubator. Students were encouraged to ask questions throughout the process about both the equipment and about conducting scientific research in general. By allowing these students to see our laboratory and equipment firsthand, we hope that we were able to excite them about the concept of synthetic biology and encourage them to want to join scientific fields in the future. While we did introduce students to the laboratory, we also wanted to highlight that not all researchers complete wetlab work and that an incredibly important group of synthetic biologists conduct computational work. We explained our project and the software that our team is building this year as computational biologists.

In addition to a laboratory tour and computation introduction, we also created an interactive demonstration to teach students about circuit design. Four student participants were given a piece of construction paper corresponding to a promoter, RBS, coding region (RFP), and terminator. We explained that the order of these components is incredibly important to circuit design and that an incorrect order could result in no protein production. Students were then directed to form the correct order for circuit function using their pieces of construction paper. After explaining the design process, the remaining students were instructed to form a circle. Our “circuit” group then entered the circle formed by the other students, demonstrating that plasmids must be introduced into a chassis to form protein. In our example, RFP production was demonstrated by giving students red candy.

To further introduce underrepresented groups to the sciences, our team hosted an event for William & Mary’s Women’s Weekend. We invited women of all ages to come tour our laboratory and to hear about the research that we are conducting. We explained our project idea and the importance of computation within synthetic biology. Historically, women are typically underrepresented in computationally-based areas and our goal with this educational event was to excite our participants about computation. In addition, we also gave the participants a tour of our laboratory and demonstrated the use of a plate reader. We discussed the importance of fluorescence in synthetic biology and explained how we measure fluorescence. We grew two bacterial cultures, each producing either green fluorescence or red fluorescence, for our demonstration. Because of the strength of our red fluorescent construct, participants were able to visibly see the red fluorescence in the culture tube. We used our plate reader to quantify the expression of these two genes. After measuring our two samples, we showed participants the data output from our plate reader and assisted them in interpreting the results.

Through these events, our team has engaged with underrepresented groups in every age category and provided them with in-person laboratory demonstrations. We believe that hands-on demonstrations are one of the best ways to ignite excitement for conducting scientific research. Our team hopes that these events have inspired some of our participants to become interested and excited about the sciences.

Educational Materials:

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As part of our team’s education this year, we produced three different materials to help people of all ages learn about synthetic biology in an engaging way. Our first deliverable is a board game entitled Re-Terraforming Earth. Through this board game, individuals “fix” several global issues, such as food insecurity, by building genetic circuits and choosing appropriate chassis. Not only does this game introduce players to the potential of synthetic biology to solve problems, it also provides them with an understanding of how circuits are designed and the importance of chassis selection. Our team tested the efficacy of our game to ensure that players learn about the process of synthetic biology while playing. Please see our communication page to read more about our testing process. This game, including the cards and board, can be downloaded off of our communication page. By simply printing our board and card deck, anyone can play this game and learn about synthetic biology at a low cost.

Additionally, our team has created a booklet full of educational information, games, and activities to introduce students to both synthetic biology at a low cost. This booklet includes information on the basics of synthetic biology, provides individuals with a sense of what can be accomplished with synthetic biology, and gives an overview of what still needs to be done in the field (which will hopefully motivate readers to want to solve these problems THEMSELVES). In addition to providing information about synthetic biology, it also includes numerous activities to engage participants with the material. These activites have all been used effectively by our team. Importantly, all of these activities can be performed at a low cost, making these educational materials widely accessible. This booklet can be downloaded from our communication page and used for a variety of purposes, such as a lesson plan or a summer camp activity.

Through both our booklet and Re-Terraforming Earth game, we have created low-cost educational materials explaining the concepts of synthetic biology and computation in a fun way. By developing these low cost materials, we hope to make the field of synthetic biology more accessible to people of all ages and all income levels. Hopefully, materials such as these will help to encourage more individuals from these underrepresented groups to enter STEM fields.

Team Recruitment:

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It is crucial that the field of synthetic biology become more inclusive. To us, a clear way to help bring about this change is by starting with our own team. The William & Mary iGEM team strives to have a diverse group of members every year. Diverse teams provide many different benefits from the development of great iGEM projects to giving people of all backgrounds the opportunity to conduct scientific research. In addition, there is significant scientific evidence that diverse teams often have increased innovation (Jones et al., 2020). In addition to having racial diversity on teams, it is also important to have inclusivity across many different academic disciplines. Interdisciplinary teams are important to the field of synthetic biology and will help teams to tackle problems that encompass many different areas, as current global problems often do. In order to build both racially diverse and interdisciplinary teams, it is necessary to recruit effectively. Over the years, we have found our recruitment method to be very successful in terms of producing a diverse team. We wanted to share some of our recruitment strategies with other iGEM teams to help others produce diverse teams. We created a guide containing recruitment strategies for other iGEM teams to use and summarized some of our tips below.

When recruiting for our iGEM team, we try to advertise in areas that will attract many different people in different disciplines. For example, we hang posters in the Integrated Science Center on W&M’s campus. This building houses the biology, neuroscience, chemistry, and psychology departments, allowing us to capture a diverse range of disciplines with a single advertisement. We have also included posters in the math and physics buildings on our campus to increase our discipline range. In addition to advertising in multidisciplinary buildings, our team also visits classes offered at our university to introduce the iGEM program and to encourage students to apply to our team. We have found that by advertising in several different classes in a broad range of departments, we are able to acquire people of many different ethnicities and academic backgrounds. Please see our guide for a list of classes in which we advertised for our iGEM team in past seasons. Further, we also wanted to highlight the benefit of advertising in introductory classes. Typically, researchers want experienced individuals and often students with less experience are overlooked. We have found that newer students are always so passionate and excited about the material, and often go above and beyond to assist with all aspects of the project. Creating a diverse scientific field starts with the actions of individuals. By developing diverse iGEM teams, we are molding the next generation of synthetic biologists to include individuals of all ethnicities and genders.

Please click here to read our recruitment guide.

Examples of Classes that our Teams have visited:

• Organic Chemistry II for Life Sciences
• Molecular Cell Biology
• Physics for Life Sciences
• Ordinary Differential Equations
• Programming for Data Science
• Introduction to Molecules, Cells, and Development (Introductory Biology)

Tips for Recruiting Diverse Teams:

• Hang posters in a wide range of buildings all over campus (even in buildings you wouldn’t assume to be relevant to synthetic biology)
• Advertise specifically in buildings that incorporate many different scientific disciplines
• Advertise in a wide range of classes, even introductory ones!

Striving for inclusion of different scientific disciplines in the field of synthetic biology:

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In addition to focusing on underrepresented groups in the sciences and the field of synthetic biology, our team also wanted to work to include some underrepresented academic disciplines in synthetic biology. Much of our work in this area was inspired by our IHP interview with Dr. Adams. She mentioned that integrating ecology and synthetic biology was crucial to the future of the field. We agreed that the field of synthetic biology itself should be inclusive in terms of communicating and interacting with other academic areas. As a result of this meeting, our team decided to reach out to the director of the Environmental Science Department to have William & Mary's synthetic biology class counted as an elective for this major.

In addition to working to incorporate environmental scientists into synthetic biology, we also strove to have a multidisciplinary team. Our team is composed of people with many different academic backgrounds, ranging from computer science to biochemistry to physics to even economics! We truly believe that many different fields have valuable ideas to offer synthetic biology and that by incorporating all of these different areas we have strengthened our team. Synthetic biology from the beginning has been a truly interdisciplinary field. We think that as it expands to new capabilities it should also expand to include relevant disciplines.

Conclusion:

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Through our team’s work, we learned about the importance of support systems for underrepresented groups in the sciences. A large majority of our participants were so engaged with the material presented and enthusiastic about the field of synthetic biology as a whole. With the many challenges that underrepresented groups face in the sciences, despite this initial passion, it is likely that these individuals will not end up pursuing careers in STEM. After our inclusivity work, our team has learned about the importance of support systems for these underrepresented groups.

Our team understands the value of inclusion in the field of synthetic biology and the sciences as a whole. As a result, the 2022 William & Mary iGEM team incorporated inclusivity into every aspect of our project. While inclusivity comes in many different forms, it has one main goal: to provide equal access to underrepresented groups. The overarching aim of our inclusivity work was to further this goal.

Our team accomplished our goal of increasing inclusivity in the following ways:

• Developing a software program to help researchers design therapeutics that will function in a wide range of human GI tracts
• Hosting events for underrepresented groups in the sciences
• Producing educational materials that are easily accessible and can be made at a low cost
• Recruiting a diverse group of individuals to compose our team
• Striving for inclusion of different scientific disciplines in the field of synthetic biology

Citations:

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• Jones, G., Chase, B. C., & Wright, J. (2020). Cultural diversity drives innovation: empowering teams for success. International Journal of Innovation Science. 12(3). 323-343.
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2022). Improving Representation in Clinical Trials and Research: Building Research Equity for Women and Underrepresented Groups. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26479.