Education and communication

Science communication is a fundamental tool to connect with local communities and raise awareness on topics often perceived as complex and far from daily life, such as Synthetic Biology, GMOs, and antimicrobial resistance. Our team felt the need to meet up with people with different experiences in science to attract their interest in those subjects.

Specifically, we were able to reach out to:

• High school teenagers through interactive presentations and debates during extracurricular activities in schools.
• General community on social media and through workshop in a local event for science communication.
• Peers through interactive presentations and debates both in curricular and extracurricular activities.
• Scientific community through a presentation during a workshop on Synthetic Biology research.

High School teenagers

Synthetic Biology is an emerging discipline, and it is not often studied in local schools. We played our part in the Synthetic Biology researchers’ community by participating in extracurricular activities in two different high schools so that teenagers could discover the opportunities given by this subject from people that not far by now were in their shoes.

On the 30th of March, Uni-Padua-IT was invited to take part in a day of activities directly organized by students of Liceo Scientifico Statale Enrico Fermi in Padua. With two 2-and-a-half-hour-long workshops, we were able to discuss misinformation in biological research, our passion for Synthetic Biology and our experience in iGEM, and expose the general outlines of P.A.S.T.A., highlighting the importance of bacteriophages against antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Firstly, we introduced ourselves telling our experience as a student team in Synthetic Biology research, what is iGEM about and what prompted us to get into it. Then, we got the ball rolling with the audience by asking for opinions on general topics on biological research and GMOs:

• Are viruses and bacteria harmful to humans?
• Are GMOs dangerous for the environment?
• Is natural better than synthetic?
• Should GMOs be released into the environment?
• Should scientific research have no limits as long as its discoveries are freely accessible to the scientific community?

From these rapid questions arose an intense debate that allowed us to evaluate the overall knowledge and opinion of the audience and to set the right tone for the presentation of more specific matters. After this initial debate, we proposed an interactive presentation on bacteria, antimicrobial resistance, and phage therapy, using a succession of questions and explanations, in which we had the opportunity to further engage with the class and connect on the topics. At last, we asked for final feedback through a pool on the issues we had conversed about during the activity.

On the 19th of May, we participated in Dies Fasti in Brescia, an event organized by Liceo Scientifico di Stato A. Calini and attended both by students and the local community. This year’s theme for the event was “Generations” and we presented a speech on the evolution of antibiotic therapy and how choices made by our generation may affect future treatment of antibiotic resistant bacteria. We aimed to make teenagers aware of the responsible use of antibiotics and catch their interest in the latest discoveries in biological research.

We opened up the discussion by asking some questions about bacteria and antibiotics. Then, we got deeper into the matter by explaining how antibiotics work and how bacteria can acquire resistance to them, illustrating the example of ESKAPE. Lastly, we debated about mistakes that had been made in the past on antibiotic use and we exposed new frontiers of treatments, introducing phage therapy.

General Community

The leading reason why we chose to develop a project on antimicrobial resistance was to give our help in solving a national and global problem. As discussed in the project description, Italy is the most severely affected nation in the European region, as reported by the latest data in 2019, with 11,000 deaths estimated to be caused by infection associated with AMR bacteria. As part of the scientific community, we were aware of the seriousness of the issue, but we wondered how it is perceived by the general community and how iterating directly with people could contribute to checking the unaware use of antibiotics. Moreover, we were enthusiastic to show our passionate engagement in Synthetic Biology, pointing out its great potential as an emerging kind of science.

On the 30th of September, we were invited to join a local event for scientific communication, named Science4All. We were given a dedicated space where we could exhibit our craft tools - microscopes, Petri dishes with different growth mediums, a bioreactor, GMO tobacco plants, and a quorum-sensing E. coli culture – that allowed us to seize the attention of the public and engage with it a constructive dialogue on the topics of our interests. We also developed a computer program to explain the relation between codons and aminoamides: letters that spelled a visitor’s name and surname were translated into an aminoacidic sequence from which was possible to show a protein having the same peptide sequence and to deduce the DNA sequence associated with it. Lastly, we prepared a quiz game for the kids to let them learn the beauty of natural sciences in a fun way.

It has been pleasant for us to discover the interest that the population showed in our project. To collect feedback, we submitted a survey on GMOs and antimicrobial resistance whose results are available for download below.

To stay connected with the general public, Uni-Padua-IT have social media profiles on Instagram and Linkedin and have been posting news on the team’s activities and short articles on AMR, bacteriophages and CRISPR-Cas9 that were published also on our website.

University students

As we tried firsthand by discussing our interests and skills during brainstorming sessions, debating with fellow students made us ponder new perspectives on the project.

In a bioethics lesson given by Professor Telmo Pievani for the biotechnologies course on the 19th of May, our team had the opportunity to share our research on antimicrobial resistance and phage therapy, particularly stressing the attention to why we have chosen bacteriophages and dCas9 system and the bioethical issues of our project. Our presentation was followed by a debate session in which peers asked about the safety and evolutionary matter of our tool, encouraging us to develop those aspects and giving us their help by sharing papers.

In addition, on the 5th of May, the team took part in BeSTEM, an event aiming to promote all the student teams that operate in STEM at the University of Padua. There we could raise awareness on GMOs and antimicrobial resistance through workshops, like what was done in other events, but most importantly we had the opportunity to create a network of students which helped us improve our organization as a team. Even though this doesn’t seem to directly affect our subject, it has been essential to improve our organogram following the lead of affirmed teams in UNIPD so that lab and research work could become more efficient.

Since it is the first time that a student team of the University of Padua is involved in Synthetic Biology research and iGEM, we felt the urge to speak up and share our project in academia to create connections in an eclectic milieu that will support the development of the team.

On the 19th of June, we were invited to take part in SynthBio@UNIPD, the first workshop on Synthetic Biology research at University of Padua. On this occasion, we were given the opportunity to share our experience in iGEM and to expose our project P.A.S.T.A. in front of the academic community. We held a 20-minute speech in which we stated the importance of both students’ initiative and professors’ support in STEM, the effort of iGEM in finding solutions to pivotal issues and in Synthetic Biology divulgation, and our goals as a student team in University and as iGEMers. We also presented our project P.A.S.T.A. for the first time in an official academic event, collecting enthusiastic feedback.

Thanks to this experience, we were able to succeed in our purpose and we have joined a newborn network of scientists involved in Synthetic Biology research at UNIPD. We hope to keep giving our contribution to this community and we are certain that this will be useful for future Paduan iGEMers too.