Difference between revisions of "Team:Toulouse France/Engagement"

In the spirit of the iGEM competition and because we believe that Science should be the corner stone of human societies, we were strongly involved to educate public about Science, Synthetic biology and the Genetically modified organisms (GMO). This commitment is illustrated by the creation of a play about GMOs, of an educational kit for schools, of videos to explain our bench works translated in different languages thanks to iGEM teams around the world and by our active participation to several local and Europeans scientific events.

Creation of a theater play about GMOs.

Because we have realized that debates about GMOs in the public were grounded on false perception of what GMOs really are, we have created a 15 min play with the goals of explaining what GMOs are and of triggering a debate with the public. This play is taking place in one student's apartment during a party gathering 5 friends. With the pretext of a debate between one opponent to GMOs and one pro-GMOs, we explain what GMOS are, that there are several types, modified plants (GMP), modified animals (GMA) and modified microorganisms (GMM). Therefore, when one raises the issue of GMOs, one should take this distinction into account. We also give various definitions so that the public would realize that legislations and definitions can be different between countries and this is a real problem when one wants to regulate the use of GMOs at the planet scale. We also explained our iGEM project and what synthetic biology is. The play is played by 4 of us plus one friend. It was created under the complete lead of a PhD student Alexia Dumas (our stage director). Our script evolved thanks to the supervision of Matthieu Pouget, artistic director and teacher at the University of Toulouse 2. We have been able to create a high-quality video of the play thanks to a friend Aymeric Voisin. We have scheduled to perform live this play notably in front of students of our university, unfortunately, the script was not ready at that time. We hope that we or others will be able to do so in the near futures, because we believe that this initiative could really educate public about the GMO issue.

Creation of educative multi-languages videos.

With the objectives of making biology accessible to anyone and of attract children to biological sciences, we have developed an educational kit destined to primary schools and secondary schools. It provides explanations of what biology, life sciences and the concept of DNA are. It contains instructions for simple experiments and provides information on precautions to take when handling GMOs. This was done under the supervision of Arthur Sarrade-Loucheur, a very creative PhD student. We have also filmed and edited explanatory videos about manipulations that we have performed at the bench, so that anyone with the right equipment could understand and carry out these manipulations. In addition, in the exchange spirit of the iGEM network, we have collaborated with different iGEM teams around the world to translate our script in different languages (see collaboration section) and recorded the voiceover in their native tongues. That way, we were able to offer on Youtube a collection of videos in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Dutch and Portuguese.

Direct exchanges with public.

We believe that it also our duty to promote Science and Synthetic Biology beyond the walls of our university and engineer school and to explain the beauty and the rationale of our iGEM project. The best way to do so is to directly discuss with public. That’s why we have actively participated to various scientific events.

• At an event at the Toulouse Museum of Natural History on the topic of Genetics, we have animated a stand on bacterial diversity. We explained how numerous and diverse are microorganisms, their incredible ability to occupy any type of environments, even the most hostile ones. We also explained their importance for life in general and that not all of them are pathogens. We talked about the notion of the intestinal microbiota. We also explained the importance of hand-washing by showing Petri plates inoculated with microorganisms from either clean or dirty hands. We have given the opportunity to 4-6- years children to perform basic experiments such as observing various microorganism through a microscope and for and for the youngest one, the opportunity to color drawing of bacteria. We also explained them how to make their own growth medium…and discuss all day-long with their parents about our iGEM project.
• At the Toulouse PhD students meeting, we have presented the project ApiColi (from iGEM Toulouse 2015) in order to show the principle and values ​​of the iGEM competition.
• At Toulouse’s Exposciences, we presented a poster on our iGEM project for the first time, exposing what we intended to achieve. The stand was also dedicated to children. Thus, thanks to a model, we explained synthetic biology in easy terms so that everybody could understand. Then, we helped children to extract banana DNA in order to show them an easy and visual manipulation, and also to make the notion of DNA much clear to them.
• At the European night of sciences in Toulouse, we have a stand dedicated to bacterial diversity and again have given the opportunity to children to make basic experiments such as the purification of banana DNA. This exhibition was coordinated by Thomas Lautier with the help of Stephanie Heux, both researcher at the LISBP, and with two PhD students Arthur Sarrade-Loucheur and Mathieu Fournié.