Outreach

Overview

Throughout the season, Westview iGEM's Science Communications and Outreach team has focused on conducting Human Practices for our iGEM project. Throughout the season, we have made an effort to connect our iGEM project and team to our community. We have done this in a variety of ways. We have made several Instagram posts

We noticed the trash littering our beautiful San Diego beaches and knew we needed to help using our knowledge of synthetic biology. However, we had to choose only one type of plastic due to our limit in resources, so we chose to target PET plastics, a very common type of plastic that pollutes our oceans. Despite the time constraints, we have been able to follow our original goals, which was to input the code for the enzymes PETase and MHETase from Ideonella Sakaiensis into Alteromonas to create an aquatic bacteria that can break down PET plastics. This idea has been researched among the scientific community, however, this is the first time that PETase and MHETase has been used in Alteromonas in iGEM, which makes it both innovative and unique. As we have not yet tested our organism in an aquatic environment, we do not know if it will have unintended, negative effects. However, it is decently unlikely as Alteromonas are found naturally in the oceans, and PETase and MHETase are also found naturally. Nonetheless, until specific experiments are done in aquatic environments, the impact of our project is unknown.

Throughout our project, we have been receiving feedback from Dr. Garza and Dr. Macho on our methods and project as a whole. However, if we were to extend the scope of our project to a larger part of the scientific community, we could receive more feedback on our feasibility and desirability. One way to do this would be to release our abstract to members of our community, such as those at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

About our season

Over the course of the iGEM season, we talked to the public and specialists in the field. To reach out to the public, we sent out a survey in the attempt to understand what the everyday San Diegan knew about microplastics in our ocean, and synthetic biology as a whole. We have also made and posted several information posts to our Instagram account (@wvigem), with topics ranging from what synthetic biology is to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to who we are as a team. We also attempted to host a synthetic biology camp for middle schoolers. Unfortunately, due to problems with insurance, we were not able to carry this plan out. However, we do have lesson plans and ideas from our planning. Additionally, we also reached out to people involved in the synthetic biology community both locally and globally, as well as those knowledgeable on microplastics and their negative effects on marine and human health, mainly locally. We reached out to those who researched microplastics affecting San Diego’s estuary fish, the microplastics around Monterey Bay, among others. These articles can be found at https://scripps.ucsd.edu/. Our project is useful because PET plastics are a huge threat to our local marine ecosystems. PET plastics harm their bodily systems and prevent proper bodily functions. So, in an effort to help our community, we have designed an aquatic bacteria that degrades PET plastics.

As Westview iGEM’s Science Communications and Outreach team, we worked to not only involve ourselves deeply into what our project is and what it entails, but also in our community in the hopes of educating and connecting with others. Our surveys, beach cleanups, Instagram posts, and YouTube videos helped us to achieve this mission by allowing us to reach out to our community, educate the public on the problem we are trying to solve and why it’s important, and what we are doing to help solve it. Below, our survey flier and survey responses, beach cleanup flier and photos, and Instagram posts can be found.

We approached our research with a strong commitment to address our community’s pressing concern: the high levels of microplastics in the ocean. San Diego is home to a myriad of beaches, all of them being popular locations for tourists and local residents. As a result, our local waters accumulate plastic waste that gradually breaks down into microplastics, contaminating our oceans and shorelines. Our project, which focuses on harnessing aquatic bacteria capable of degrading PET and MHET plastics in the ocean, directly aligns with this problem. In fact, we conducted personal visits to several local beaches, identifying those with significant plastic pollution issues and determining the most prevalent types of microplastics present. By targeting these specific types of plastics, we are working toward a solution that directly benefits our local beaches and contributes toward the reduction of microplastic pollution in the ocean. Creating social media posts about microplastics and the dangers of them in our waters has allowed us to create awareness among our community and maximize the importance of this problem. Our beach cleanup which we held has also been a contributor to reducing plastics and helping other people connect and work towards our public goal. Our project not only highlights the urgency of this issue but also offers a practical and environmentally friendly approach to mitigating it, overall promoting a cleaner and healthier ocean ecosystem for our community.

Our Science Communications and Outreach team has made significant contributions to our iGEM team's overarching goals. Through our initiatives to raise public awareness about synthetic biology and our project's mission, we keep the community well-informed with our efforts. Our efforts, including beach clean-ups, Instagram posts, surveys, and flyers, have played a pivotal role in garnering publicity and community interest. Utilizing various outlets of information, such as flyers, videos, and posts, our audience gets a better glimpse of what our goal is, and how we are supporting our teams. Additionally, we maintain a strong online presence, ensuring our social media pages are regularly updated with engaging content! Furthermore, we've shared our findings with the broader scientific community, raising awareness and potentially paving the way for more widespread adoption of this eco-friendly solution. Overall, our team worked very hard to cooperate and communicate between teams to ensure everyone was on the same page and help advocate for our project’s main goal. We created the Westview iGEM Microplastic Breakdown Survey 2023 together. This survey is a way for us to spread words about our project as well as a way for us to have a clearer understanding of how much knowledge related to our project’s topic that many people in our community know. So far, we’ve been able to get 50+ people to fill out this survey and we are absolutely looking forward to telling it to more and more people. We also published many social media posts about who we are, our project and why it is important. Those social media posts not only talk about what we do, it also provides much general knowledge regarding our project such as facts about the effects of plastics and garbage in the ocean. We received support from various people in our community and through our Beach Cleanup, we were able to bring our goals into actual actions so that we can show our community how much we care about making an impact through our project.

Our project has the potential to greatly benefit our oceans and marine health, which is intertwined with our society in Southern California. However, our project could have an effect outside of Southern California, as the problem we sought to solve is worldwide. If implemented, our project can help to lower the quantity of PET plastic in our oceans, which will help to prevent further harm to our sea life, as well as our own health. Our society has impacted the direction of our project as marine life and health is a major concern in our community, as well as worldwide, specifically our local scientific community. As a result, we chose to work on a project which could provide a real life solution to a serious issue, the high levels of microplastics in our oceans. Additionally, we have spent time understanding the level of knowledge of people in our community in regards to synthetic biology and topics more specific to our project, which was done through surveys. Furthermore, we have also taken steps to educate others who are less knowledgeable on the topic through social media posts, videos, and word-of-mouth.

Our project will affect society and the environment in beneficial ways, by using aquatic microorganisms to break down PET plastics in the ocean. Our initiatives to address plastic pollution in the ocean will address rising concerns for the environment, and especially marine organisms who are greatly affected by this. By reducing microplastic pollution, we are one step closer to a healthier planet. Through protecting marine ecosystems and advancing biotechnology for environmental conservation, we create a stronger community dedicated to helping the environment and planet overall, and our project greatly addresses the necessary value of protecting our oceans.

Our project is founded by a steadfast commitment to safety, sustainability, and security. Our project adheres to rigorous safety protocols in the laboratory in order to safeguard our team, the environment, and the broader community. Sustainability is a cornerstone of our mission, with our focus on degrading PET and MHET plastics through environmentally friendly processes, we aim to reduce plastic waste in the environment and promote a more sustainable future. We have taken measures to ensure the security of our project, particularly concerning genetic materials and engineered organisms. Responsibility guides our every step; we routinely assess the ethical and environmental implications of our work, engaging in ongoing dialogue with both experts and the community. We keep out bacteria contained and protected as it’s monitored by expert researchers at JCVI. We’ve conclusively determined that our project is good for the world by focusing on the global problem of microplastic pollution, as it uses naturally occuring pathways in naturally occuring bacteria that are both compatible with our environment. Our project offers a natural and eco-friendly solution to a critical environmental issue. By degrading plastics in the ocean, we aim to contribute to a cleaner and healthier ecosystem, benefitting not only our community but also the world at large.

As a whole, we have focused on education and community involvement to benefit our community, share our project, and engage as a team. One of the exciting activities that we’ve done is the Beach Cleanup, which was an opportunity for our whole iGEM team to meet at Del Mar Beach with the intention of reducing the amount of trash present. This activity was a way for us to display our values and goals. At the beginning of the season, we created a survey, aimed at our community, to understand our community’s knowledge in regards to the problem we are aiming to solve (PET plastics in our oceans), their knowledge on synthetic biology and methods, and their opinions and recommendations as residents of San Diego. The most important approach we’ve taken, however, has been engaging with our mentors, Dr. Garza and Dr. Macho, as they thoughtfully assisted us in identifying the key steps we have taken to create our project. At Dr. Garza’s recommendation, we focused on transforming Alteromonas with PETase and MHETase parts. We first began our project by searching for different parts that would work with our bacteria, and once we found our parts, we began to build our plasmid maps. When it was time for us to start going into the lab, Dr. Garza and Dr. Macho guided us through each of the steps that were necessary to build our plasmids and insert them into our bacteria. They were always ready to explain to us each of the steps as we went through and also helped us troubleshoot when we came across issues. We also collaborated with Fiona Kearns, a postdoctoral scholar at UCSD. She advised our team on how we could approach the issue of PETase thermostability and gave us a lot of information about PETase and MHETase structures, using her experience and background in the topic which was invaluable to Dry Lab. Dry Lab met with her during multiple Zoom meetings, and she went over how she used molecular dynamics on the platforms VMD and NAMD to obtain the information that our group used to form graphs that evaluated PETase thermostability. The help that we received from our wonderful and supportive mentors allowed us to come this far, and we are so appreciative of them.

Communications

Over the course of our season, we reached out to many experts in our community about the premise of our project, the microplastics in our oceans. We mainly focused on articles from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. We researched the articles "Microplastics Found in a Quarter of San Diego Estuary Fish" from March 18, 2020, and "New Study Finds Microplastic Throughout Monterey Bay" from June 5, 2019. Additionally, we researched "A Detailed Review Study on Potential Effects of Microplastics and Additives of Concern on Human Health" by Claudia Campanale, Carmine Massarelli, Ilaria Savino, Vito Locaputo, and Vito Felice Uricchio, which is inserted below. This article was provided to us by Jenna Nyholt de Prada, a professor of Biology at the University of San Diego. Additionally, we also reached out to associates at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Kara Wiggin and Allison Kellum, who provided us with the wesbite "Microplastic Compendium" and the fact sheet "Plastic Pollution Facts and Figures" from Ocean Conservancy. We also met with Lambert iGEM via Zoom to give them data for our project. Below is a picture from our meeting. Additionally, we also maintained contact with Del Norte High School, Rancho Bernardo High School, and Canyon Crest Academy's iGEM teams.