Exploiting the syntegron technology platform for assembly and optimisation of complex genetic ensembles
Lead Research Organisation:
John Innes Centre
Department Name: UNLISTED
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Technical Summary
The proposed project fits within the EPSRC priority area of Synthetic Biology. In our previous EPSRC-NSF funded project (hereafter, Phase I), our team developed an innovative, versatile recombinase enzyme-based system for assembling and dynamically rearranging DNA modules and multigenic assemblies in a manner inspired by natural bacterial integrons. This “Syntegron” technology platform allows us to rapidly and efficientlyassemble multiple standardized DNA modules to generate large and diverse functional assemblies such as metabolic pathways, genetic circuits, or multi-domain proteins. The platform includes a novel inducible lateral gene transfer technology enabling individual cells to exchange Syntegron modules (e.g., regulatory elements, gene variants such as homologs or mutant libraries, or subassemblies such as partial metabolic pathways), in order to sample vast combinatorial diversity and enable efficient, dynamic optimisation of large, multigenic functions such as biosynthetic pathways, which are the target application for this overall project. This project will provide new scientific advances and state of the art techniques in: a) Tools for rapid strain improvement and pathway engineering. b) Synthetic engineered organisms for efficient production of high-value products. c) A novel synthetic biology toolbox of genes, regulatory elements and vectors. The project is part of a multi-disciplinary collaborative research project on the development of methodology for synthetic evolution of complex genetic ensembles in bacteria and plants that includes groups in the UK (Dr Susan Rosser, University of Edinburgh; Professor Paul Freemont, Imperial College, London; Professor Declan Bates, University of Exeter) and the US (Professor Josh Leonard, Northwestern University; Professor Jay Keasling, UC Berkeley).
Planned Impact
unavailable
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Anne Osbourn (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Boobier S
(2017)
Can human experts predict solubility better than computers?
in Journal of cheminformatics
Medema MH
(2016)
Computational genomic identification and functional reconstitution of plant natural product biosynthetic pathways.
in Natural product reports
Zhou Y
(2016)
Convergence and divergence of bitterness biosynthesis and regulation in Cucurbitaceae
in Nature Plants
Yu N
(2016)
Delineation of metabolic gene clusters in plant genomes by chromatin signatures
in Nucleic Acids Research
Liu Z
(2020)
Drivers of metabolic diversification: how dynamic genomic neighbourhoods generate new biosynthetic pathways in the Brassicaceae.
in The New phytologist
Osbourn A
(2016)
Editorial overview: Plant biotechnology.
in Current opinion in biotechnology
Nützmann HW
(2014)
Gene clustering in plant specialized metabolism.
in Current opinion in biotechnology
Owen C
(2017)
Harnessing plant metabolic diversity.
in Current opinion in chemical biology
Boutanaev AM
(2015)
Investigation of terpene diversification across multiple sequenced plant genomes.
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Kemen AC
(2014)
Investigation of triterpene synthesis and regulation in oats reveals a role for ß-amyrin in determining root epidermal cell patterning.
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
| Description | Humans depend on plants as sources of important chemicals, including many of the pharmaceuticals, antimicrobials, flavour and fragrance compounds, food and beverage additives, insecticides and agrochemicals in current use. However the vast majority of the chemical diversity represented within the Plant Kingdom remains as yet untapped. This is because there are significant challenges associated with accessing this chemical diversity. Firstly, most plant natural products have complex structures that are beyond the reach of chemical synthesis. Secondly, in general these chemicals cannot be extracted from the plants that produce them in a sustainable and economical manner due to low yield, difficulties in cultivation, or because the source material is a rare or endangered species. There is thus an overwhelming need to find alternative solutions that will enable sustainable and commercially viable harnessing of chemical diversity from the Plant Kingdom. The scale of the economic opportunity associated with this objective is enormous. For example, the global market for plant-derived drugs has been estimated to be over £20 billion for the last decade, and there is a growing demand for green, environmentally friendly and sustainable means of producing high-value chemicals across a wide range of industrial sectors. The triterpenes are one of the largest and most structurally diverse groups of plant natural products with a wide range of potential applications in the pharmaceutical, agricultural, food, beverage and industrial biotechnology sectors. In excess of 20,000 plant triterpenes have been reported but only ~80 are commercially available, and these are obtained by extraction from plants, often growing in the wild. The Osbourn lab has developed a platform for triterpene metabolic engineering. We are able to make a diverse array of known and novel triterpenes. The development of a strategy to screen this metabolic diversity directly in yeast to establish which of these new molecules is likely to have important and relevant biological activities for development as new drugs would circumvent the need for laborious manual analysis of hundreds of thousands of molecules. We have therefore developed a whole cell biosensor in yeast based on mammalian anti-inflammatory signalling pathway that is designed to detect molecules with anti-inflammatory activity. We have demonstrated that all of the components of the biosensor are functional in yeast. We have further shown that the biosensor responds to externally fed bioactives as expected. The next step (currently underway) is to engineer a yeast strain that expresses the genes for the synthesis of anti-inflammatory triterpenes under an inducible system and integrate this with the biosensor in vivo. In a new avenue of research we have carried out a systematic analysis of biosynthetic gene clusters in the Brassicaceae, identified over 50 candidate clusters across diverse members of this family, and carried out functional analysis of one of these (from Shepherd's purse). This work has revealed that biosynthetic gene clusters are likely to have arisen independently on multiple occasions and make different types of triterpenes. Large-scale comparison of these clusters across genomes is providing insights into the birth, life and death of clusters and hence into mechanisms of metabolic diversification in plants. This work has now been published. |
| Exploitation Route | Our research has provided the foundation for a powerful platform in which we combine high throughput metabolic engineering with direct identification of molecules with the desired bioactivities of potential interest to the pharmaceutical sector. Our cluster mining work across the Brassicaceae has provided a wealth of additional enzymes for triterpene engineering that we are integrating into our triterpene toolkit. The bioinformatics approaches that we have developed in collaboration with Marnix Medema, University of Wageningen, are now enabling systematic analysis of biosynthetic gene clusters across multiple plant genomes. We are building on this foundation to develop a platform for large-scale genome mining and functional analysis of triterpene biosynthetic enzymes. We are also paving the way for empirically testing the power of machine learning with the large datasets that we are building by integrating biological and computational science. To this end I have secured an award to work with the Turing Institute to evaluate the feasibility of this approach using triterpene synthases as a Proof of Concept. |
| Sectors | Agriculture Food and Drink Chemicals Creative Economy Education Manufacturing including Industrial Biotechology Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
| URL | https://www.jic.ac.uk/directory/anne-osbourn/ |
| Description | The major scientific and technological impacts of the first part of this project have been to develop a whole cell biosensor in yeast based on mammalian anti-inflammatory signalling pathway that is designed to detect molecules with anti-inflammatory activity. This biosensor has been validated by showing that it responds to externally fed bioactives, and we are currently combining the ability to engineer anti-inflammatory triterpenes into yeast with the ability to detect said triterpenes in vivo using the biosensor. We anticipate that this platform will enable high throughput screening of diverse metabolites in vivo for identification of molecules with potential for development as new drugs. We already have a very powerful platform for engineering triterpenes, building on the extensive synthetic biology toolkit that we have developed, and so are well positioned to combine the biosensor with our triterpene engineering capability to pan for new bioactives. This toolkit has been expanded substantially through our systematic genome-wide analysis of triterpene biosynthetic gene clusters in the Brassicaceae. Systematic analysis of the triterpene synthase gene content of 15 Brassicaceae species has been carried out, and the genomic neighbourhoods around these genes interrogated to identify genes predicted to encode triterpene tailoring enzymes. This has provided us with an inventory of triterpene biosynthetic gene clusters and a framework with which to investigate the birth, life and death of clusters. Interestingly, we have shown that clusters with superficially similar gene content (i.e triterpene synthase, CYP705, CYP708 and acyltransferase genes) have arisen independently in different Brassiceae lineages, have different tissue-specific expression patterns and make structurally distinct products. Bioinformatics-based methods for large-scale comparison of these clusters have been developed using approaches similar to those established for microbial clusters. We have been in discussions with Plant Bioscience Limited about potential protection of the biosensor IP. We have also had a meeting with a major pharmaceutical company who are interested in discovery of new bioactives. In vivo validation is underway. Once this is completed we will move forward to explore potential opportunities for further development and evaluation of the technology, most likely through partnership with industry. During the course of her research Tessa Moses, the first postdoctoral researcher working on this project, has also taken part in engagement activities including the Great British Bioscience Science Festival event in December 2014, at which we had a stand on Nature's Factories (http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/engagement/exhibitions/gb-bioscience-festival/natures-factories/). With other members of the Osbourn lab she also took part in delivery of a Science, Art and Writing (SAW) project (www.sawtrust.org) on metabolic engineering of wheat for food security at Barford Primary School on March 11th 2014, working with a class of 9-10 year old children. The second postdoctoral researcher appointed to the grant, Zhenhua Liu, has also taken part in several outreach activities, including the 2017 John Innes open day. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Chemicals,Creative Economy,Education,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal Economic |
| Description | Analysis of triterpene biosynthesis and diversity in neem |
| Amount | £12,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | IE151125 |
| Organisation | The Royal Society |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2016 |
| End | 02/2018 |
| Description | BBSRC High Value Chemical from Plants Network Proof of Concept Funds |
| Amount | £57,099 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | POC-OCT15-03 (OSBOURN) |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2016 |
| End | 11/2016 |
| Description | Harnessing enzymes from plants for selective functionalisation of triterpenoid scaffolds |
| Amount | £542,505 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/S016023/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2020 |
| End | 06/2023 |
| Title | Establishment of a common syntax for plant synthetic biology |
| Description | Inventors in the field of mechanical and electronic engineering can access multitudes of components and, thanks to standardization, parts from different manufacturers can be used in combination with each other. The introduction of BioBrick standards for the assembly of characterized DNA sequences was a landmark in microbial engineering, shaping the field of synthetic biology. Here, we describe a standard for Type IIS restriction endonuclease-mediated assembly, defining a common syntax of 12 fusion sites to enable the facile assembly of eukaryotic transcriptional units. This standard has been developed and agreed by representatives and leaders of the international plant science and synthetic biology communities, including inventors, developers and adopters of Type IIS cloning methods. Our vision is of an extensive catalogue of standardized, characterized DNA parts that will accelerate plant bioengineering. To this end we have proposed a common syntax for exchange of DNA parts for plant synthetic biology. This is supported by the international community and has been published. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The establishment of a common plant syntax has paved the way for the introduction of an Open MTA for material transfer, now trialled and published (Kahl et al. 2018, Nature Biotechnology 36: 923), simple and open systems for recusrsive fabrication of DNA circuits (Pollak et al. 2018, New Phytologist: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15625) and for discussions with Addgene, the nonprofit global plasmid repository, archives and distributes plasmids for scientists. These advances are catalytic and we envisage that they will promote and accelerate plant biology research within the UK and internationally. |
| Title | Transient plant expression technology for triterpene production at preparative scale |
| Description | We have develop a method for transient heterologous expression of biosynthetic enzymes in N. benthamiana for production of high-value triterpenes. Agro-infiltration is an efficient and simple means of achieving transient expression in N. benthamiana. The process involves infiltration of plant leaves with a suspension of Agrobacterium tumefaciens carrying the expression construct(s) of interest. Co-infiltration of an additional A. tumefaciens strain carrying an expression construct encoding an enzyme that boosts precursor supply significantly increases yields. After a period of five days, the infiltrated leaf material can be harvested and processed to extract and isolate the resulting triterpene product(s). This is a process that is linearly and reliably scalable, simply by increasing the number of plants used in the experiment. We have developed a protocol for rapid preparative-scale production of triterpenes utilizing this plant-based platform. The protocol utilizes an easily replicable vacuum infiltration apparatus, which allows the simultaneous infiltration of up to four plants, enabling batch-wise infiltration of hundreds of plants in a short period of time. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Generation of gram-scale quantities of 98% pure triterpenes and demonstration that we can rapidly carry out combinatorial expression of enzymes from our triterpene toolkit to generate known and new-to-nature compounds. This had attracted considerable interest from industry and led to four new projects directly funded by different companies in the pharma, ag, food and drink and home and personal care sectors. |
| URL | https://www.jove.com/video/58169/transient-expression-nicotiana-benthamiana-leaves-for-triterpene |
| Description | Built new image library for the Norwich Research Park |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | To help raise awareness of the high quality research carried out across the Norwich Research Park, we developed an open access image library to showcase images of NRP science accompanied by accessible legends suitable for a general audience. The image library has the potential to attract new traffic to the NRP institute websites and research group homepages and will allow groups such as the media, schools, the general public and other researchers to gain a glimpse of the great depth and diversity of research that is being carried out in Norwich. Although all the images are freely available to download and use, people are required to sign up to use the library and are asked to enter information at the time of download about their intended use of the image. This helps to capture who is using the library and where the images are being used. So far images have been downloaded 582 times and have been used in presentations, publications, on websites, for education and advertising. We ran an image competition to raise awareness across the NRP site and then assembled a judging panel to select the top 12 images which were used to create an NRP calendar for 2016. The calendar was sent to politicians, business leaders, industry and academics at institutions in the UK and internationally. The competition featured in the local paper, the Eastern Daily Press and an overall winner was picked and used to make a large canvas which is hanging in the new Centrum building. We have received many positive comments about the libraries ease of use for finding good quality, copyright free images to use in presentations from fellow researchers across the site. In October 2016 we put on a two-week, large scale image exhibition at the Forum in Norwich as part of the first Norwich Science Festival. The images attracted a lot of interest and several artists have been in touch with scientists whose research images were on display to set up new collaborations using science to inform artistic practice. We will post outcomes of these endeavours onto the image library website to widen our exposure to new audiences. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015,2016 |
| URL | http://images.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Cambridge Science Festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Designed and ran interactive activities at the Cambridge Science Festival to show what synthetic biology is and how we can apply this to plants to use either to gain deeper understanding about biological processes or to design new applications of benefit to society. The stand invited people to play games that generated different ideas for using synthetic biology in plants which created a great starting point for discussions around responsible innovation. Our stand won an award from the Cambridge BID (Business Improvement District) Awards following some 'mystery shoppers' evaluating stands across the Cambridge Science Festival. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk/2016-event-recordings |
| Description | Great British Bioscience Festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We were successful in a winning a BBSRC science communication award to develop a new science stand called 'Nature's Factories' to run at local events and as part of the BBSRC's Great British Bioscience Festival showcasing the best of British bioscience in its 20th anniversary year. Human evolution is tightly linked to our use of plants for food, building materials, fuel, medicines etc., and we continue to look for innovative ways to use natural resources to provide us with sustainable solutions that support our lifestyles. Scientific research is enabling us to discover and develop new plant products that improve our lifestyles by creating better medicines, healthier foods and greener technologies whilst also demonstrating the importance of protecting plant species diversity and ecosystems. The Nature's Factories stand was designed to enable the public to find out how science is exploring and exploiting the valuable variety of chemicals made by plants as well as making natural remedies to take away and pick leaves from our fact-tree. We took the stand to the Science in Norwich Day at the Forum in Norwich (1st June 2014), to the Cambridge Botanic Gardens (19th August 2014) and on the 12th November 2014 used the stand for a training workshop for EU scientists to learn how to create interactive displays for public events. On 14-16 November 2014, our exhibit headed to Museum Gardens, Bethnal Green, London to be showcased at BBSRC's Great British Bioscience Festival. The festival, delivered in partnership with London Science Festival was open to the general public and free to attend. Since then the exhibit has featured at the Bury St Edmunds family science festival (21st March 2015), the Fascination of Plants day at the John Innes Centre (14th May 2015), the Festival of Plants at Cambridge Botanic Gardens (16th May 2015) and at the Youth Stem Awards (13th January 2016). We plan to use the exhibit throughout 2016. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015,2016 |
| URL | http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/engagement/exhibitions/gb-bioscience-festival/ |
| Description | High Value Chemicals from Plants- Harnessing the potential of synthetic biology for industrial biotechnology. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | High Value Chemicals from Plants- Harnessing the potential of synthetic biology for industrial biotechnology. 13-14 July 2015, Dunston Hall, Norwich. I delivered a 20min talk about the use of the HyperTrans system in goldengate vectors and its benefits for metabolic engineering. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | John Innes Centre 50th Anniversary Open Day. (16 September 2017) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Approximately 3000 people attended. The support of our local community, and allowing as many people as possible to find out more about what we do is important to us, so in the build-up to the event we were delighted to welcome both BBC Look East and BBC Radio Norfolk onto the site, to chat to scientists and preview the event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://www.jic.ac.uk/news-and-events/blog-copy/2017/09/open-day/ |
| Description | Latitude Festival OpenPlant Exhibit, 14-17.07.16 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Latitude Festival Led by Jenni Rant from the SAW Trust, Michael Stephenson, Colette Matthewman, Marc Jones and Dorota Jakubczyk (JIC) worked with Paolo Bombelli, Katrin Geisler (Cambridge University), Brenda Parker (UCL) and Marin Sawa (Imperial) to deliver a 3-day OpenPlant exhibit entitled "The Power of Plants" in the wildlife, weird science and adventure area at the Latitude Festival, Suffolk, from 14-17 July 2016. The exhibit showcased the potential applications of synthetic biology in plants in a hands-on and accessible way. The first day was dedicated to hosting organised school groups where children spent 40 minutes with us experimenting with a variety of plants to learn how scientists are using them in new and novel ways. The second and third day were run as a drop-in style to cater for family groups giving opportunities to engage with children and adults. Visitors were very interested to see science research straight from the labs and amazed by new innovations being developed through synthetic biology. The event was very tiring but the opportunity to work as a team with members from different institutes on a shared science theme was very enjoyable and rewarding whilst also expanding our understanding of each others work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.latitudefestival.com/stage/wildlife-weird-science-adventure |
| Description | NRP DTP Summer Conference 2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | NRP DTP Summer Conference 2015 held in the assembly house in Norwich. 15 min talk: Pathway engineering using the GoldenGate MoClo system. Norwich Research Park Doctoral Training Partnerships |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Norwich Science Festival John Innes Centre Exhibit 22.10.16 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Norwich Science Festival. The interactive 'Power of Plants' stand from the Latitude Festival made another appearance at the first Norwich Science Festival with Katrin Geisler coming over from Cambridge University to join JIC scientists Michael Stephenson, Hannah Griffiths, Colette Matthewman, Zhenhua Liu, Nadiatul Radzman, Dorota Jakubczyk, Don Nguyen, Miriam Walden, Jenni Rant and Roger Castells-Graells for two days as part of the Norwich Research Park's 'solving problems with science' weekend. A new addition to the stand was developed by Roger who introduced visitors to the structure of viruses through his challenge to build a giant virus particle. Plants are being used to produce virus particles for use as vaccines and so for visitors this deeper look at viruses in combination with a hands-on experience of mock infiltration of Nicotiana benthamiana plants with water enabled the scientists to explain the techniques involved and exactly what is being made by plants in this system. People were very interested in the variety of science on display and asked lots of questions. It was good to showcase our research at the first Norwich Science Festival and to show people locally how far reaching the work taking place in essentially a rural county can be in terms of impact to societies across the globe. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://norwichsciencefestival.co.uk/ |
| Description | SAW School Visit to Salem State University, Boston, USA |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The Science Art and Writing initiative has been used to run complementary projects with educationalists in the US since its inception in 2005. In 2008 we visited the School of Education at Salem State College to work with 7-9 year olds exploring the theme of 'Maple Syrup' through science art and writing, and trainee teachers attended a SAW training workshop. Salem State has long been an advocate of the SAW approach, and SAW exercises continue to be part of the teacher training delivered by the institution. On the 28th April 2015 we returned to Salem State University to run a SAW project on the theme of photosynthesis with a class of 9-10 year old children and were joined by trainee teachers who wanted to learn the process. We have been invited back in 2016 to further develop training and partnerships in the Boston area. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | SAW Seminar - Sowing the seeds for science outreach |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented creative outreach projects and ways to capture impact at the department seminar to encourage scientists to be bold with their outreach plans and to demonstrate the value of documenting the process and the outcomes for reporting, reflection and to improve the method. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | SAW Workshops at the Cambridge Science Centre |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A new festival that celebrates everything to do with light took place in Cambridge in February 2013. For the e-Luminate festival, the SAW Trust worked with the Cambridge Science Centre and artist Jenny Walsh to run a workshop entitled 'Lighting up inspiration'. Families learned about the relationship between the colour spectrum and light wavelengths. Light was then used to create a collaborative piece of art that explored the iridescent properties seen in oily puddles and in nature to create a peacock. For the 2013 Festival of Ideas in Cambridge we worked with scientist Andy Osborne who specialises in eye research. We ran a drop-in workshop at the Cambridge Science Centre for families where they could learn about how the eye works and the variety of different eye diseases and disorders that can impact on sight. Andy had some great vision altering glasses that helped people to understand what sufferers of different eye conditions can see. We were joined by artist Jenny Walsh and some sixth form students who invited people to help build a giant eye sculpture to learn more about the rods and cones in the eye. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| Description | SAW workshop at Barford Primary School 11 March 2014 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Saw (Science, Art and Writing) project in Barford primary school together with Jenni Rant, Gemma Farré Martinez, James Reed, Chris Hann (artist) and Mike O'Driscoll (writer). We spent an entire day at school, explaining my project (Engineer wheat for "Take all" resistance) and opening a dialog about GMOs with 10 to 11 years old pupils. This project took place on the Tuesday 11th of March 2014. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Science in Norwich day |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Helped Jenni Rant (SAW) to hold a stand describing the scientific research ongoing at JIC, at the Science in Norwich Day at the Forum on the 1st of June 2014 . |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://soin.org.uk/2014/04/science-in-norwich-day-2014/ |
| Description | Submitted scientific images to the Norwich Research Park image library |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The NRP image library consists of images arising from research in life and environmental sciences on the Norwich Research Park . The aim of NRP research is to deliver solutions to the global challenges of healthy ageing, food and energy security, sustainability and environmental change and this is reflected in the images in the library. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://images.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/searchresults.aspx?query=leveau |
| Description | Training workshop (Edinburgh) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | OpenPlant is working with the SAW Trust to deliver some of its engagement activities, particularly with schools. The SAW team were invited by the University of Edinburgh SynthSys & UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology to deliver a training workshop for scientists, artists, writers and teachers to enable them to design and deliver SAW projects in schools around Edinburgh. This approach to engaging children in current scientific research in an accessible way provides an excellent tool for scientists who wish to use diverse methods to showcase the potential impacts of their research. Working in teams with professionals from the arts fuels creative thinking and innovation around engagement styles whilst also providing novel science themes for artistic interpretation. Working with teachers helps to inform knowledge on current research to provide new examples for use in the classroom and the whole process enables co-learning from a science starting point in a multi-disciplinary way. Several SAW projects took place in Edinburgh schools in the months following the workshop where they were greatly received. We returned in 2017 to provide training for more people and again in 2018 and so the pool of SAW-trained scientists, artists and writers has grown significantly and the popularity of SAW in schools is providing a constant network for scientists to deliver novel engagement activities with children. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017,2018 |