Team:Imperial College/Engagement

Public Engagement and Education

This year our team, ecolibrium, has created a mobile game: Go Culture which aims to introduce the concept of microbial co-cultures to a wider audience. Our research into data visualization, which emerged from our reflexivity process, shows the importance of interactivity. It serves to engage the audience, and improve their understanding of our project. We believe that abstract concepts, such as the function and co-operation of microbes, can be better understood through interactive representations, hence the idea of creating a game. If you have done so yet, please download it from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store!

When we were developing our game, we used Bloom’s taxonomy to develop the objectives. This takes the form of a hierarchical framework which we have used in other parts of our project (Armstrong, 2013). Learning at the higher levels is dependent on having developed knowledge at lower levels (Shabatura, 2015). The summarized hierarchy we used from bottom to top was:

1. Knowledge - Recognition of terms and ideas.
2. Application - Apply abstractions to specific concrete situations.
3. Synthesis - Creative construction of novel ideas from multiple sources of information (Armstrong, 2013).

We wanted people who played our game, Go Culture, to be able to:

1. Recognize what co-cultures are and how they can be beneficial.
2. Explain where they occur in nature and how they can be useful to people.
3. Produce their own ideas for novel applications of co-cultures.

Based on the responses we received from participants in our game, we believe Go Culture succeeded in achieving our educational goals. 80% of people who played were able to recognise and explain co-cultures. Moreover, they were able to create amazingly novel applications which we had previously not considered like managing obesity through the regulation of the gut microbiome.
Over 100 people at the New Scientist Live Event, and an additional 15 students from the City of London High School contributed to the testing of our game. We had over 20 hours of contact time with players, and collected detailed survey responses from everyone.
In the future, we would like to increase the amount of guidance the game provides its players. For example we would like to improve the instructions for how to mix microbes to make novel applications on our mixing platform in the game. We would also like to include a short tutorial video at the beginning of the game. Furthermore, we would like to expand the number of microbes and products available in the game.

Go Culture Game

Most people have a negative view of bacteria and microbes in general. We wanted to show that many different microbes exist and that most of them are very useful to humans. Since our project focuses on co-cultures and microbial consortiums we also showed that these are very common and explain some processes in which they are employed. We created a video game in order to present and inform the public on the points above in a fun and interactive way.

The aim of the game is to collect different types of microbes and co-culture them to obtain all the products available in the game. The microbes are found at the end of platform levels in specific environments such as the Gut or the Ocean. The lab environment is where the player can, using a mixing platform, mix the microbes together and create products such as yogurt and glow-in-the-dark cellulose.

Microorganisms to collect in Go Culture Game

Most of the microorganisms in our Go Culture game have been used in iGEM and synthetic biology. Others have yet to be engineered but they are known to have interesting properties which one day could be used.

Table 1: Table of all the microorganisms

Picture	Microbe Name	Game Level	Natural Environment	Description
	Lactobacillus	Green Level Gut	Human microbiome (digestive, urinary and genital tracts). Also found in fermented foods, like yoghurt and sourdough bread	This ‘friendly’ bacteria is a common probiotic supplement for lactose intolerance improve the immune system. Can be used to treat certain skin disorders, such as eczema and acne
	Bacteroides	Blue Level Gut	Mammalian gastrointestinal tract	Breaks down complex food molecules, producing nutrients and energy for the body.
	Bifidobacterium	Red Level Gut	Human microbiome (gastrointestinal tract, colon, female urinary and genital tract)	Used as an effective probiotic for digestive problems (e.g. irritable bowel disease).This is one of the first bacteria found in the gastrointestinal tract of newborn babies
	Streptococcus thermophilus	Green Level Kitchen	Fermented dairy products e.g. yoghurt and cheese	Converts lactose (the sugar in milk) into lactic acid, needed for the production of yoghurt. 1 billion kg of mozzarella cheese is made using S. thermophilus every year.
	Penicillium	Blue Level Kitchen	Soil, plants and decaying organic matter	Penicillium roqueforti: Used in the production of blue cheeses, e.g. roquefort, gorgonzola and stilton Penicillium chrysogenum: Penicillin production. Blue cheese was first eaten by humans in AD 50
	Propionobacterium shermanii	Red Level Kitchen	Swiss cheese e.g. emmental and jarlsberg	Ferments lactate to produce CO2 bubbles, which are used to create holes in swiss cheese. There are almost 1 billion cells of P. shermanii per gram of emmental cheese. You can control the size of the holes in swiss cheese by changing the temperature and pH of the mixture
	E. Coli	Green Level Factory	Large intestine of warm-blooded animals.	Syn bio Chassi, does loads of stuff, drug production, biosensors... It takes 40 hours for E.Coli to completely colonise the gut of a newborn baby.
	S. cerevisiae	Blue Level Factory	On the surface of ripe fruits e.g. grapes	Essential for wine-making/brewing and baking. Very popular eukaryotic model organism. A small capsule of S.Cerevisiae was sent on a 3 years interplanetary trip to investigate the fate of living cells in deep space. S.Cerevisiae is what causes bread to rise in the oven.
	B. subtilis	Red Level Factory	Soil and human intestine	Used as a model organism in laboratory research. Secretes enzymes that break down proteins and carbohydrates. Can form dormant spores that tolerate extreme environments
	Pseudomonas denitrificans	Green Level Forest	Soil and water.	Produces vitamin B12. 1 litre of this bacteria can produce 60 milligrams of vitamin B12.
	Nitrobacter	Blue Level Forest	Soil	Plays an essential role in aquaponics oxidizing nitrite into nitrate in soil. They secrete a slime matrix that allows them to attach to surfaces.
	G.xylinus	Red Level Forest	Kombucha Tea and Soil	Makes Cellulose. Extrudes glycan chains from pores into the growth medium. These aggregate into microfibrils, which bundle to form microbial cellulose ribbons. Used by Imperial iGEM Team in 2014 in order to make cellulose water filter and clothes.
	Dinoflagellate luciferase	Green Level Ocean	Marine and freshwater habitats	Glows when stimulated by a force e.g. by a boat or wave. The luminescence only occurs at night time, causing the sea to sparkle blue.
	Cyanobacteria	Blue Level Ocean	Soil and water	Can make its own food through photosynthesis. Can be engineered to produce biofuels. They are the oldest known fossils.
	M. magnetotacticum	Red Level Ocean	Shallow freshwater and sediments	Able to orient itself according to the Earth’s magnetic field using magnets it produces. Potential to be used for magnetic tapes and magnetic drug targets.
	Deinococcus radiodurans	Extreme Land	Soil and feces	Polyextremophile as it can withstand cold, dehydration, vacuum and acidic environments. Is the most radiation resistant organism known. Was listed as the world’s toughest bacterium by The Guinness Book of World Records
	G. sulphuraria	Extreme Land	Acidic hot springs	Is a thermoacidophile as it is able to survive in high temperatures and highly acidic environments. Produces a photosynthetic pigment called phycocyanin. Can be found in hot sulfur springs in Italy, Iceland and Russia.

Products to create in Go Culture Game

The products are obtained via the drag and drop mixing interface in the Lab zone. The products were inspired by current products created using microbial consortiums or synthetic biology, previous iGEM projects and some were invented to trigger the player's imagination. Most players, when interviewed, were able to create new products by using the ones they created in the game as inspiration.

Table 2: Table of all the products

Picture	Product Name	Microbe 1	Microbe 2	Microbe 3
	Yogurt	Lactobacillus	Streptococcus thermophilus	Lactobacillus or Streptococcus thermophilus
	Probiotic Yogurt	Lactobacillus	Streptococcus thermophilus	Bifidobacterium
	Blue Cheese	Lactobacillus	Streptococcus thermophilus	Penicillium
	Swiss Cheese	Lactobacillus	Streptococcus thermophilus	Propionibacterium shermanii
	Sourdough bread	S. cerevisiae	S. cerevisiae	Lactobacillus
	Probiotic	Lactobacillus	Bifidobacterium	B. Subtilis
	Gut Flora	E. Coli or Lactobacillus	Bifidobacterium	Bacteroides
	Cellulose Overcoat	E.coli	G. xylinus	G. xylinus or E.Coli
	Glowing Cellulose	E.coli	G. xylinus	Dinoflagellate luciferase
	Aquarium Water filter	E.coli	G. xylinus	Nitrobacter
	Antibiotics	Penicillium	E. Coli	B. Subtilis
	Aquaponic Ecosystem	Nitrobacter	Cyanobacteria	B. Subtilis
	Biofuel	Cyanobacteria	Cyanobacteria	E. Coli
	Vitamin B12	Pseudomonas denitrificans	Pseudomonas denitrificans	Pseudomonas denitrificans
	Artemisinin	S. cerevisiae	S. cerevisiae	S. cerevisiae
	Magnetic Infinity Lamp	Dinoflagellate luciferase	Cyanobacteria	M. magnetotacticum
	Fluorescent Lamp	Dinoflagellate luciferase	Dinoflagellate luciferase	Dinoflagellate luciferase
	Nanomagnets	M. magnetotacticum	M. magnetotacticum	E. Coli
	iGEM top 3 Chassis	B. subtilis	S. cerevisiae	E. Coli

Our Go Culture game was built using the Unity 3D game engine. The game has a PC version and a touch device version. Both of these versions of Go Culture can be found on our Github.
The touch version of Go Culture can be found on the App Store and the Google Play Store.

Reference

1. Armstrong, P., 2013. Bloom’s taxonomy. The Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University, Retrieved on, 3, p.2014. 2. Shabatura, J., 2015. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives | TIPS.
Available at: https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy/ (Accessed: 10th October 2016)

Email: igem.imperial2016@gmail.com