“It is important to sensitize the people about antibiotic resistance by raising awareness!” - Dr. Samuel Khan
“In order for people to understand your project, you should educate them about antibiotic resistance” - Dr. John-Stewart Gordon
During our conversations with outreachs we learned how important educational spread of our project is Since our aim was to develope a biosensor to detect antibiotic resistances, it is a key task to spread the background knowledge and applicabilty in everyday life to different target groups. Therefore, tremendous efforts were put into raising awareness to this area.
Here is a collection of events that we as a team participated in order to fulfill our aim in spreading the concern of antibiotic resistance and iGEM in general.
Throughout the summer period our team has presented our project in three different schools and during the Night of Science to reach all age groups.
Figure: The Night of Science poster 2023.
Night of Science [1] is an interdisciplinary scientific annual event at the Goethe University Frankfurt, organized by students since 2006. It attracts not only students from Universities, but also highschool students that want to get more insights into the multiple facets of science.
All visitors have the opportunity to participate in exciting workshops and experiments to learn about different kinds of research topics. Apart from that there are a range of presentations held by students, professors and postgraduates.
Our team utilized this opportunity, during the Night of Science but also in schools, to explain the general mechanisms of β-lactams and how they were further developed by the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, we emphasized the emerging problems and how every single person can contribute to prevent further spread of resistances. While we presented our idea and the applicability of the biosensor, visitors showed great interest. Through mutual interests we had many conversations about the human microbiome, treatment plants and implications for following generations.
OUR WORKSHOP AT THE NIGHT OF SCIENCEPlenty visitors have heard of antibiotic resistances before but were not aware of their significant consequences in coming years. Furthermore, we explained to the children how resistances work and how to make bobas as a way to make the idea of our alginate capsules more clear.
We distributed flyers and stickers to spread advertisement about our project and to give visitors the opportunity to read more thoroughly into our project. On top of that we managed to show a simple yet accurate demonstration of our alginate capsules: Bobas! Yes, the bobas that we have in our Bubble tea! Especially children were fascinated by our demonstration and were happy to try it out by themselves! This allowed us to adapt our activities to the public.
On top of that, our little experiment enabled us to explain our project in a very easy way so that even children could understand the purpose of our alginate capsules! It was pretty clear that children were amazed and curious by everything we were showing.
While some of us demonstrated experiments together with the children, other members of our team presented more details about our project and antibiotic resistance to people that passed by our booth. With some posters, that we prepared we tried to persuade the audience about the potential of our project to stop the progression of antibiotic resistant pathogens!
Figure 1: Insights from our workshop at Night of Science. You can see our booth as well as how we held presentations and demonstrated the formation of bobas to children!
Besides the many workshops that Night of Science offers, we also had the opportunity to hold a presentation to a very diverse audience consisting of graduate students, undergraduate students, high school students, professors, PhDs and much more!
Throughout our presentation, held by our co-team lead Olivia and wet-lab lead Carolin, many questions about our project arose and we were happy to see how enthusiastic and curious our audience was!
The main issue throughout the discussion was how exactly antibiotics are currently being tested in wastewater and how wastewater treatment plants should be further revolutionized. Furthermore, there were still uncertainties regarding approaches what to do if antibiotics were detected. Therefore, it is essential to know how to quantify antibiotic concentrations and how we do it with our approach. This discussion seeked to deepen the understanding and perception of the members to examine the benefits and drawbacks of various ideas and provide constructive criticism of various approaches. Through these exchanges, members gained deeper knowledge about synthetic biology and its impact and possibilities for a society.
Our presentation got even published on “Schwalbacher Woche- Taunusnachrichten”[2] and “Schwalbacher Zeitung” [3] which even further spread our reach to the society!
Figure 2: Our team holding a presentation about iGEM and antibiotic resistance at WiTechWi and articles published about that day!
We had students from a variety range of ages which was very delightful. With that we could spread awareness about antibiotic resistance and how we can prevent that with our project.
Giving students more insights into synthetic biology and to awake scientific awareness would be a great victory for us. Holding presentations in schools was truly inspiring.
Working with teachers and directors of these schools to spark the academic ambition of these students was incredibly rewarding to our team. The teachers were also open to work with us even after the iGEM competition which would be a incredible opportunity to carry on promoting iGEM and synthetic biology in schools!
Figure 3: Overview of other presentations our team held in schools
BIOspektrum is THE science magazine when it comes to life sciences. Everyone has wanted to be featured in a magazine. Here we are. With our own project in BIOspektrum.
The magazine acts as a bridge between scientific literature and an interested and scientifically educated public. That is why we thought it would be the perfect medium to reach a wide audience with our project. One advantage we would gain is that we'd reach a much different audience than we would normally reach through our social media posts, as the magazine has an older target audience than, for example, our Instagram posts.
Figure 4: Our article in the BIOspektrum magazine
"Multiresistant Monday" was initiated to keep viewers updated with interesting facts. Social media is the best way to reach a large number of people as it is used by almost everyone.
In order to emphasize distinct issues about antibiotic resistance and make it convenient to read, our team created short facts on instagram. Weekly posts gave short summaries about distinct issues with antibiotic resistance. We included historical facts such as the first widely used antibiotic Penicillin and how it has revolutionized the field of medicine. Furthermore, we pinpointed root causes of spreading antibiotic resistance and occurrence in different areas (e.g. in the meat industry and aquatic environment).
Figure 5: Collection of Multiresistant Monday posts that we posted weekly on our official instagram page
"There is a lack of safety instructions when it comes to working with antibiotics in the lab" - quote from Anastasia Lev
To respond to the need of spreading more information on how to work with antibiotics in the lab our team and iGEM Bochum decided to publish a fun video on how to work with antibiotics in the lab. This allows us to spread awareness about antibiotic resistance in a very fun way which motivates the audience to take our content seriously. We met the iGEM team from Bochum to learn about each others project and exchange feedback. It was fascinating to see how Bochum is constructing a similar biosensor for β-lactam antibiotics that uses a fluorescent protein to indicate the presence of antibiotics and degrades it. Furthermore, we discussed roadblocks each team faced and were thankful for helping each other. Both teams aimed to reduce resistances from every day life and give scientists an understanding of how to properly dispose antibiotics.
Figure 6: Our collaboration with iGEM Bochum on how to work with antibiotics in the lab
Podcasts are popular among young people nowadays and are easily available for everyone on streaming sites. We were delighted to have the opportunity to be featured on the podcast hosted by Ethan Ree from California. In his podcast, Ethan informs the next generation about antibiotic resistances. Thus, we took our time to inform about our iGEM team in Frankfurt and about our project. We discussed how it can help to combat the silent pandemic of antibiotic resistances and how listeners can support our group. We hope to reach plenty of attentive listeners, so that many people feel compelled to take action.
We collaborated with Piyush Gupta who is a PhD student and an influencer on instagram to give an educational statement about resistances. He makes great content about science and has a huge community on his instagram account. In our merged video Piyush is introducing himself and informing about antibiotic resistances. Our part includes presenting our iGEM team in Frankfurt and especially our project and goals. We aim to increase our reach so that thousands of people can be exposed to the problem of resistances and be made aware of emerging issues.
Figure 7: Our collaboration with Piyush Gupta, a PhD student from Freiburg who has a huge community on instagram.