From 2013.igem.org

Disclosing synthetic biology and science popularization

Synthetic biology is not well known in Brazil and we realized that one of the consequences of this is the small number of Brazilian teams competing in iGEM. With a little more publicity, we could help raise awareness of synthetic biology in Brazil and perhaps increase the number of Brazilian teams in the coming years.

No information on Wikipedia(pt)

A simple example of the lack of information in Portuguese about iGEM: there is no page on Wikipedia (of course, we are working to solve this). In this chart below, we see the comparison of the interest over time to organic searches on Google by "synthetic biology" and its counterpart in Portuguese. The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time (they do not represent absolute search volume numbers):

This other graph is the comparison of interest in iGEM competition in different Latin American countries:

So, our divulgation was made not just to communicate with other teams, but also to inform and generate interest in public unaware of this new area of research and this competition. To do so, we promoted different initiatives within and outside the university.

Within the university

- Synbio OpenHouse

UFMG´s Synbio Open House invitation

In February of 2013 was held a SynBio Open House at UFMG. The invitation to this event was sent to all academic community. The event was presented by our instructor Liza Felicori, who made an introduction to synthetic biology for those who attended, which also had the opportunity to apply to be a participant in the iGEM team.

- Seminar

Presentation of our proposal to IGEM competition at the seminar of the UFMG Graduate Program of Biochemistry and Immunology in April 19^th

On April 19th, when we were starting to be known inside the university, we were invited to make a presentation about iGEM, our team members and project proposal for the competition on the seminar organized by the Biochemistry and Immunology Graduate Program. This seminar happens on Fridays and has as audience the graduate students and professors from the department. It was a very good experience because we practiced a formal presentation and had the opportunity of answering several questions about our project and experimental design. After the presentation, we received valuable tips from UFMG researchers, which helped us to adjust our proposals concerning the chosen biomarkers and the experimental approaches for achieving our aim.

- Classes at the course “Ideas in immunology”

Once our initiative on participating of iGEM was disclosed, the professor Nelson Monteiro Vaz, involved on a partnership between Brazil and Boston, showed great interest and invited us to have a talk to other students during two classes of the course “Ideas in immunology”. In these opportunities, we could introduce students to synthetic biology and the iGEM competition, present our project and debate how new trends in immunology may lead to a paradigm shift, revealing how body interacts to microbiota and new horizons to synthetic biology projects, like on the use of probiotics. New scientific reports presented on the last World Congress on Inflammation and the Annual Congress of Brazilian Society of Immunology (SBI) were also debated, including the important role of TMAO on immune system modulation as bacterial product, what highlights the relevance of our project.

- Offering a new course: Introduction to Synthetic Biology

Related to iGEM opportunity to apply knowledge of synthetic biology, our instructor Liza Figueiredo Felicori Vilela created a new course, called “Introduction to Synthetic Biology”, which students might apply. Therefore, this was an important step to academically set the participation on the iGEM competition and disclosure more and more about SynBio.

- UFMG & Escolas Project

In order to introduce children to synthetic biology universe (literally… virtually travelling to Mars!) of present and future applications, we have created and applied a didactic (and, please… fun!) game for middle school students. This opportunity and public arose from a preceding, very prestigious project (called “UFMG & Escolas”, literally UFMG & Schools; http://www.icb.ufmg.br/biq/ufmg-escolas/) from the Biological Sciences Institute (ICB) of our university, whose intention is presenting compulsory school students to scientific life. Along a week, students participate in many activities related to what academic community produces. They also have the opportunity of developing and presenting a proposal of an empiric project that they have to idealize and execute. According to our planning, a short presentation tought students about the concept of synthetic biology, the biological structures, and the iGEM competition. Once students had this basic information, they were oriented to separate themselves into seven groups, dispersed along the room where there were monitors from iGEM_UFMG team. Each group received a card deck and chose an initially secret mission to explore by engineering a genetically modified organism (GMO). On a first moment, the card game (BRICKARD) was played among the group mates: each student should individually try joining the set of cards that he/she judged propitious to form the GMO able to solve the problem presented in the group mission. At this time, they only knew details about their own mission, while there were cards related to the other missions, whose utility they ignored. Whether no one could show a complete and congruent set approved by all group mates at the end of 5 minutes, the group together should elect one. On a second phase, independently from how they achieve the set, the whole group should present its mission and chosen solution to everyone, justifying why their set of cards could be used to construct a GMO in order to complete the mission. The boys and girls were always stimulated to speculate, trace hypotheses and show arguments (for or against), but direct answers were not easily given to them. After each group final presentation, students were argued and evaluated by other students (their pairs!), which decided if the group efforts deserved or not a reward (two yummy chocolates…). All of them received candies and applauses, but the real sweetness was on their discovering about how science is made and where biological engineering may take us.

- The Brickard Game

BRICKARD is the card game we created as a tool to help explaining synthetic biology in a fun way. The game consists in a deck composed by 40 cards, which are divided into the main biobrick categories:

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