Education

Introduction

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GutFeeling is a project about a drug delivery system that uses engineered gut bacteria to produce therapeutic compounds directly inside the patient. While from our perspective the science behind this holds great promise, it will be impossible to get our product from the lab to the patients that need it without acceptance of the general public.

Through survey data and interviews, we found out that people can be hesitant about the idea of ingesting a genetically modified organism, especially when it is supposed to produce medication. However, their responses also made one thing clear, hesitancy was often rooted in unfamiliarity and fear of the unknown, not opposition. We got a clear indication that people wanted to understand more about how the system works before they would be completely on board.

This insight led us to re-think our approach to education. Rather than teaching synthetic biology in a very general, academic way, we designed our education activities around our central question:

"What does someone need to understand to feel comfortable with synthetic biology based solutions in the context of therapeutics or otherwise?"

We focused on:

• Explaining how plasmids, kill switches, and gut bacteria work in a simple and visual manner.
• The two core principles of plasmid design - functionality and safety. Why biosafety and regulation are critical.
• Demonstrate how synthetic biology techniques can be relevant across diverse sectors including geosciences, business, etc. Encouraging collaboration and sparking discussion.
• What problems our system solves and how it functions in a clear, visual manner.

Our goal was not just to transfer knowledge, but build confidence and trust for future synthetic biology projects, including ours, by showing how diverse the applications can be, how science and safety are woven into design.

By engaging diverse audiences—from families in museums to university students and curious attendees—we aimed to create a foundation of understanding that could support future public acceptance of systems and solutions like ours. We are positioning education not just as outreach, but as an essential component of responsible innovation and advancement.

Pedagogic Framework: Building the Reef

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When we designed education for children, we wanted it to be structured, age appropriate, inquiry based learning, that requires minimal resources and is openly available. However, after communicating with teachers and staff, we came to a conclusion that our education also needed to be a cohesive addition to the kids' learning experiences, based on the institution's ongoing programs, age-appropriate pillars of pedagogy, development, and expectations.

As a starting point for "The Plasmid Game" and education for ages 13-18, we made use of Bloom's Taxonomy to promote higher-order learning.

For, "Make your own bacteria" (fill-in Plasmid Game) activity, part of our workshop at the University Museum of Utrecht (UMU) for ages 3-10, we used Lev Vygotsky's "Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Process" as a guiding point.

Secondary Education: The Teens

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We have collaborated with, developed educational materials and lesson plans for secondary students ages 14-18 years old (grades 9-12), with the goal to:

"Introduce students to the fundamentals of synthetic biology with the help of an engaging, age-appropriate activity. Empowering them to think critically about biotechnology, plasmid design, and their real-world applications."

We conducted lessons in several international schools in the Hague, the Netherlands and in Lisbon, Portugal, reaching students from multiple countries and backgrounds.

Our lessons were designed using Bloom's taxonomy to outline clear educational objectives, how they are achieved through learning activities, and assessed to promote higher-order thinking, and inquiry based learning in students. These classes were meant to compliment and not clash with the ongoing curriculum. For example, for students grades 11-12, we managed to cover some learning objectives of the International Baccalaureate (IB) "Unit 6: Biotechnology" and "Unit 2: Cell Biology" in addition to our own.

We started our classes with a presentation introducing the basics of synthetic biology and concept of commensal gut bacteria, checking in with students throughout, asking questions like "What do you think when we talk about bio engineering?", "What job do you think the bacteria in your gut do?" "What should we think about when making a useful bacteria?". Focusing on keeping students engaged, through activities that encouraged critical thinking, like discussing plasmid design.

Following the presentation, students divided into groups and tried their own hand at designing a plasmid to solve a task. Each group was given the same kit of plasmid parts (promoters, tags, genes,etc.), assigned a task, like cleaning up sulfur out of the sewers, and were given 15 minutes to work out optimal design. Then, each group presented their problem and defended their solution. "The Plasmid Game", was a consistent hit with both teachers and students, since it allows for the application of the knowledge, assess learning goals, allows for reflection, and it can easily be adjusted for the grade level.

“The Plasmid Game”, was a consistent hit with both teachers and students, since it allows for the application of the knowledge, assess learning goals, allows for reflection, and it can easily be adjusted for the grade level.

Teaching was not easy, it was a constant learning process for us. After each class we got feedback from both teachers and students, what did they like? What was hard? What can be explained better? After every class we adjusted our presentation, learning new analogies, new ways to grab attention, and introduce topics. In the end, we came to the conclusion that all classes are different and we, as teachers, needed to adapt to their energy and engagement.

In total we have conducted 10 high school lessons (that's 900 minutes or 15 hours!). All of the lesson plans including learning goals, The Plasmid Game, and PowerPoints are available in the Resources tab. It was rewarding to see how kids responded, actively engaging in debate and defending their design choices, bringing up very interesting points that we haven't thought of ourselves. This gave us the sense that we successfully sparked curiosity and excitement about synthetic biology.

"Personally I believe the class structure was a success. The division between information/activity/questions was perfect, the content was fun, engaging and disruptive to our kids, which was great, and the activity, being simple, was ideally formatted for that class and remaining time. The students talked about it for the next two days, which is an indication of success, too."
— Jose Rocha, Biology grade 9 teacher

Fundamental education pillars achieved during the lessons

Principals	How it was applied	Supporting evidence
Bloom's Taxonomy	Remembering and Understanding - presentation, Q&A Applying and Analysing - designing a plasmid for a world problem Evaluating and Creating - Presenting and defending their solutions.	(Wilson and Leslie, 2016)
Inquiry, Problem Based Learning	Students engaged in authentic scientific inquiry. They explored real problems, came up with solutions and defended their solutions, using critical thinking and giving feedback to their peers.	(Pedaste et al., 2015) (Savery, 2006)
Formative Assessment and Feedback	Understanding was checked through questions during presentation and solving example problems.	(Schildkamp et al., 2020)
Adaptive Teaching and Reflective Practice	Iterative refinement after feedback from students to teachers, allowing for responsive teaching and continuous improvement.	(Schipper et al., 2020)
Age-appropriate, curriculum alignment	Lessons complemented IB biology objectives, the challenges matched student level and were adaptable to each age group.

The Kids and The Parents (or: The Guppies and the Wise Fish)

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University Museum Utrecht: iGEM Utrecht x iGEM Leiden collaboration

We collaborated with Leiden's iGEM team to bring a playful, interactive event to the University Museum Utrecht. After Leiden gave the children an introductory talk on the basics of synthetic biology, we let children interact with the educational tool SCORCH, described below, and let them make their own bacteria. Older kids played a Dutch translation of the plasmid game described previously, and younger children, from seven years old and younger got a bacterium to customize. Since most of the kids were so young, it was very challenging for us to set clear goals for them, so our main goal for that day was to:

"Spark curiosity about the bacteria world by engaging children in playful, imaginative, age-appropriate activity. Through drawing, storytelling, and collaboration with parents, help kids engage in inquiry based learning, developing early science thinking skills"

Unlike the plasmid game, which is based on real world synthetic biology parts and applications, we wanted to offer younger kids the opportunity to let their imagination run wild. We asked them to think of the following traits for their bacteria:

• If you could have it make or do anything you wanted, what would it be?
• When should your bacterium start making or doing this?
• When should your bacterium stop?

For example, several children came up with bacteria that made a specific flavour, often candy or cookies, or turned a bad flavour into a nice one, such as brussel sprouts into pizza. As children were writing their bacteria's descriptions and drawing their visions of their use, we asked them clarifying questions to motivate them to think about the logistics of their bacterium. We asked the kids where they imagined their bacteria would be: does it change the flavour in the brussel sprout, or change your sense of taste in your tongue? Often, children were able to explain exactly how they imagined this would work. The worksheets we provided, which are available in the resources tab, allowed the children to draw their newly invented system. This multimodal approach lets the children interact with the subject matter in several ways, which has been shown to increase long-term retention of the subject (Wammes et al., 2019)

We asked the children to consider when to turn this special task on or off. In the previous example, we would motivate the child to consider that having your bacteria produce the sense of tasting pizza in your mouth might be nice when eating brussel sprouts, but not when trying to enjoy candy. In this case, the young girl immediately decided there should be some sort of mechanism to sense the presence of brussel sprouts, which would then activate the pizza flavour gene.

Similarly, we made the activity more playful by introducing the children to our friendly shark Iggy that made a bacterium that makes him fish-flavoured yoghurt, following up with things like "Do you think fish-flavoured yoghurt tastes good? No? So how do we make sure not all of the yoghurt tastes like fish?" This led children to wonder if we could tell the bacteria to stop making fish flavour after a while or maybe keep it contained to one spot.

Both of the examples mentioned above show a technique called inquiry-based learning. We never explained the concept of conditional promoters or biosafety measures to these kids before, only gave them a problem where such concepts could offer a solution. In these cases, children tended to understand the concept immediately after coming up with the idea themselves in a fantasy context. We would then briefly explain that such mechanisms were actually possible to make, and in fact very important.

In several cases, the boundless fantasy of the kids caused their parents to ask some questions as well. It was at times challenging to balance our tone in such a way that children could still understand what we were saying when explaining more complex concepts in response to parents' questions. We did notice, however, that children were more than eager to listen to us explain something when their parents were noticeably excited to hear the answer, prompting many of the parents to collaborate with their kids when designing their bacteria.

Sometimes, parents or children would wonder about the feasibility of their fantastical creations, leading to interesting conversations about what parts of reality could be found in their fantasy. For example, some children came up with a system of several bacteria that would need to communicate with each other for their system to work. One girl suggested a set of two bacteria, one in her body that could sense when she was thirsty, and one in her water bottle that would refill it every time she was. This led to a conversation about whether or not bacteria could communicate. We then explained that, yes, bacteria can actually communicate by exchanging certain chemicals or even their DNA, but that the distance from your body to your water bottle might be a bit ambitious.

When children were done with their creation, we made sure to compliment them on their great effort, and thank them for giving us such a good idea for a bacteria. We then offered the children the choice of taking their bacterium home or leaving it behind as a helpful example for other children. Many children chose to leave their creation behind after we set up a wall for them to display it, and the option to display their own art in the museum gave many of them a great sense of determination to do their best in this activity. Both "make your bacteria" game and "the plasmid" game are available in the resources tab.

Fundamental education pillars achieved during the UMU event

Principals	How it was applied	Supporting evidence
Constructivism	children constructed meaning by inventing bacteria and linking its function to everyday life, rather than passively receiving information	(Vygotsky, 1978)
Multimodal and Embodied learning	Children expressed ideas through drawing, writing, and discussion, which helps to retain memory and make connections.	(Wammes et al, 2019) (Kress, 2010)
Inquiry based learning	Children asked and answered their own questions "what could my bacteria do?" "how do I make the flavour stop? Would I want the flavour to stop?"	(Pedaste et al, 2015)
Social Constructivism and collaborative learning	Children collaborated with their peers and parents, discussed the task and shared perspectives	(Callanan et al, 2020)
Recognition and Motivation (Self-Determination Theory)	We displayed children's bacteria which is shown to foster pride, ownership, and a sense that their contribution mattered. An important developmental process.	(Guay, 2022)
Learning through play	Activity used narrative through Iggy the shark, hands-on making an imaginative bacteria made learning playful.	(Mardell et al., 2023)

STREAM Festival Eindhoven

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As part of our effort to have a broad and meaningful educational reach, we were happy to be involved in the STREAM festival organized by the Romanian School in Eindhoven. The festival brought together science students and working professionals whose goal was to introduce the participants, young children mostly aged 7 to 13 years old, to the world of science. Our goal for this event was to:

"Introduce children to science through hands-on experiments and guided inquiry, encourage curiosity, active participation, and discussion, by making connections between simple biochemical phenomena and their everyday lives"

Under the supervision of Silvia Mihăilă, one of the Utrecht University professors who kindly assisted us during GutFeeling, our colleague Vlad participated in the festival. Our goal was to us interactive experiments and labwork to help develop the base for a next generation of curious researchers, this time through interactive experiments and lab work.

During STREAM, Vlad assisted with holding workshops for the young participants, where they performed simple experiments and discussed various aspects of science. The kids were eager to get hands-on experience within the workshop and ask questions about simple biochemical phenomena, safety, how it works in real life and much more. This activity allowed for embodied and inquiry based learning , since students were able to discuss and perform experiments. The kids were being asked guiding questions, but the interaction was very much led by them and their curiosities.

We believe that research is most fruitful when curiosity is the driving force. Keeping this in mind, we are grateful for the opportunity of being involved in such an initiative and interacting with a group of ~40 curious minds ready to expand their knowledge. We are confident that we made an impact and sparked an interest for science in a couple of the next generations’ researchers and innovators!

The learning pillars in this activity we achieved similar fundamental pillars to the UMU event:

Principals	How it was applied	Supporting evidence
Constructivism	Kids didn't just hear facts, but they built their own understanding by performing experiments, asking questions and as the result forming connections to their life.	(Vygotsky, 1978)
Multimodal and Embodied learning	Children expressed ideas through drawing, writing, and discussion, which helps to retain memory and make connections.	(Wammes et al, 2019) (Kress, 2010).
Inquiry based learning	Kids asked many questions about the experiments and how they could be useful to them, guiding the interaction. They were active participants not passive observers.	(Pedaste et al., 2015)
Social Constructivism and collaborative learning	Children collaborated with their peers, parents, and supervisors discussed the task and shared their opinions and questions.	(Callanan et al., 2020)

All in all, we aimed to introduce children of various ages to the very basics of synthetic biology using structured educational frameworks to keep them engaged and motivated, and to spark some curiosity for this subject. Even though every child is different and had a different level of interest in our efforts, we believe that all of them were engaged enough to remember this as a positive experience.

And who knows? Maybe one of them might become an iGEMer, not too far in the future.

Higher Education: Utrecht University

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University students are a key audience for us, they are the emerging professionals of the future: policy makers, researchers, lawyers, etc. They are the force that will engage directly or indirectly with synthetic biology based solutions, like a genetically modified gut bacteria as a drug delivery system. As the project went on we were proven time and time again that implementing a project like GutFeeling (or any sort of synthetic biology-based approach) requires an interdisciplinary approach. Synthetic biology is evolving and entering fields outside biology or life sciences.

We chose to collaborate with several student organisations on campus with various backgrounds and areas of studies, organising seminars and discussion events. Depending on the event and the audience goals per session varied, however the overarching theme remained the same:

“Foster open, critical discussion around synthetic biology, biosafety, how it relates to multiple fields. Teach basic principles of synthetic biology and encourage interdisciplinary dialogue, peer to peer learning, and bridging disciplines.”

Geosciences Honours College seminar

While geosciences appears to be only distantly related to synthetic biology, we have discovered that it is not entirely the case, as there are many practical applications. During the seminar, we focused on introducing the basics of synthetic biology, gauging the participants' understanding of the subject, and discussing the use of GMOs in society. Following the presentation, we played "The Plasmid Game", however, this time we selected 3 real-life cases: oil tanker striking a reef (Exxon Valdez), the collapsing of a mining dam (Mariana disaster), and the decline of soil health. All of these are very real scenarios that have occurred and are very big problems in geosciences. To further increase complexity we have given some blank plasmid blocks which they could use to make more custom solutions. In the end, each team managed to come up with a synthetic biology based solution. The discussion was fierce, but in the end, the winner of the best design was unanimously selected.

During the post-activity reflection, the participants have expanded their view on the possibilities that GMOs offer in geosciences. However, they had some concerns, chiefly concerning the consistency and safety of GMO solutions. It was interesting to hear their insights about their field, standards for the tools they use, and how that would look like in the context of potential biological tools. Needless to say it was an exciting seminar for us, as we not only received a lot of positive feedback from participants, but we also gained a new perspective on new applications and factors to consider with non-laboratory synthetic biology-based approaches. Importantly, we also discussed what areas in geoscience may not be good candidates for synthetic biology-based solutions.

For instance, such approaches often depend on controlled environments and systems with predictable boundaries, which may be challenging to maintain in the open, complex and variable conditions that are typical for oceanic and geological sites. We must also consider the effects of introducing modified species into poorly-understood ecosystems. Issues such as long term stability, regulatory requirements, and cost. Some students brought up a point that "[synthetic biology-based solutions] sound like very complicated and expensive solutions for things that can be solvable in other ways".

Overall it was a very productive evening that has introduced a lot of nuance and criticism regarding unnecessarily over-engineering tools and solutions.

Science Honours Academy

We are also organising events with UU Science Honours Academy and the UU Honours Student Council, but unfortunately due to scheduling these events will occur after the wiki freeze. Nonetheless, we have been in active communication with their representatives and have already established clear goals and plans.

We are looking to promote discussion about synthetic biology based problem solving. What might it look like in an interdisciplinary context? What trends about synthetic biology and science development are they noticing? What are some main criticisms against such solutions?

Of course, we will play the plasmid game. We will increase the difficulty by creating harder challenges, allowing more room for nuance and giving them blank plasmid parts that they can customize themselves, and presenting the teams with a desirable prize to foster healthy competition.

Honours Student Council: Pizza Nights for Peer Discussion

Hosted at Utrecht University, these are informal discussions to explore synthetic biology, and welcome students and staff from all stages and backgrounds. Each session commences with a short presentation about our iGEM project, followed by a discussion around topics of GMOs, biosafety, and how the progress in synthetic biology reflects in other seemingly unrelated fields in both positive and negative light (e.g economics, law, and mathematics). The first session is going to be more open to help us establish areas of interest for the participants that we will be using to set the next topics.

Public Education: From Science to Storytelling

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To build genuine understanding and trust in synthetic biology, especially around complex ideas, we recognised the need to go beyond the traditional teaching. Recognising that people need new ways to relate to it. Thus, we focused our efforts into making synthetic biology accessible, visual, and interactive, reaching people across as many ages and backgrounds as possible.

From producing educational games and interactive models, to collaborating with student-artists and imaginative roleplay, we created experiences that reframe biotechnology tangible.

Dutch Design Week and SCORCH

This year, iGEM Utrecht will proudly participate in the Dutch Design Week (DDW) in collaboration with BioArts Laboratories. DDW is one of the biggest design events in Europe, showcasing the works of interdisciplinary designers, over the course of 9 days (October 17th - October 26th). This was no doubt an exciting opportunity, but it was quite the challenge. It required us to develop not only new technical skills, but change the way we view the project. The goal was to:

"Develop interactive tools that communicate synthetic biology concepts (here, the difference between a pill and engineered bacteria) in a way that is engaging, understandable, and memorable for a broad, non-specialist audience".

SCORCH: the Scientific Communicator Of Remedial Colonised-Gut Holobiote

Our solution was to create a simple, interactive teaching model: SCORCH. SCORCH is meant to be easy to approach and use, serving as a conversation-starter. We reached out for help to Lili's Proto Lab (LPL), Utrecht University's scientific prototyping lab, after hours of brainstorming, electronics, and woodworking, SCORCH was born.

SCORCH is a recycled plywood cut-out of the human body (simplified), equipped to read two NFC tags attached to a 3D-printed bacterium and pill, based on which it will send a signal to the lights in the brain, representing the effect of medication. The pill results in a short, flickering signal and needs to be constantly re-activated, while the bacterium generates a long, continuous signal. This allows us to clearly explain the difference between the effects of our bacteria vs a traditional medication in a very clear manner.

Since we brought him into this world, SCORCH has been a conversation starter at events and presentations, appealing to kids and adults alike. He allows us to engage more with the public and simplify our project to be more approachable. SCORCH's next destination will be the Dutch Design week 2025, after which he will travel with us to the iGEM Paris Jamboree, so stay tuned!

When Art Meets GutFeeling…or Science meets Art

As part of our public education effort we wanted to connect with people emotionally, creatively, and visually, beyond lectures and classrooms. We launched an initiative to explore our project through art by collaborating with student artists from across the globe.

Art allows us to open new ways of thinking about science, to address topics that seem unfamiliar and intimidating. Our goal was to:

"Make synthetic biology more human and accessible, but also bring awareness to the problems that we have identified from the Parkinson's patients and their families that we aim to help manage".

We invited a group of international student artists to participate in a creative dialogue around our project. How do they view gut microbiome, and what the future of living medicines will look like?,.etc. During these open-ended discussions, we talked about how science and society intersect, eventually narrowing down to 4 main prompts/themes:

• How do you see the gut microbiome?
• What is a living biopharmaceutical (e.g. bacteria producing medication)?
• What might the living medicines of the future look like?
• Pieces created based on the experiences described by Parkinson's patients

It was interesting to see that most of the artists saw the microbiome and terrarium, or a greenhouse. This made us think about the impact of language, and how it reflects in our perception of a scientific concept. For example, when describing our project to one of the artists as "little drug factory in your gut", his drawing took on a much more industrial feel.

Through this collaboration, we learned that science doesn't need to speak only in technical terms, it can be expressive and multifaceted, bridging creativity with rigor making complex ideas more accessible to a broader audience. Beyond that, this collaboration made the artists think outside of their own reality as we invited them to try and describe what feeling fluctuation in medication can feel like for Parkinson's patients, with work being driven by patient testimonies. Unfortunately, one of the works is only going to be finished after the wiki freeze, but we will be sure to add it, as it describes how precious yet anxiety-inducing time can be for Parkinson’s patients. We are excited to say that we will be bringing a few of the works to the grand jamboree, feel free to stop by our booth!

Dungeons and Dragons one shot: when synbio meets fantasy

Dungeons and Dragons or DnD is a popular, collaborative storytelling and role play tabletop game known across the world. It brings people together to embark on journeys across fictional worlds. This year as a part of our education our goal was..

"to create an interactive, narrative-based educational tool that uses roleplay to teach plasmid biology and biosafety concepts"

For the first time, iGEM Utrecht introduces: Pseudomonas Palace - The Shattered Plasmid. Available now through Resources.

Pseudomonas' palace was created as part of the 2025 Utrecht iGEM team's educational efforts. The goal is to teach people basic concepts of synthetic biology and biosafety in a playful and creative manner. The adventure is designed so that a Dungeon Master (DM) who is familiar with some basic concepts of synthetic biology can convey them to a group of players who are unfamiliar. Players are motivated to not only learn about synthetic biology, but argue about the best approach to biosafety, for example, all within the context of a fantasy world.

The adventure takes place in a magical place known as the Gutlands, which may appear as a regular world full of buildings and people like we are used to in DnD, but which is all set in the intestines of a colossal being known as the Titan. Here, the lush microbiome used to be protected by the healing magic of the Plasmid, an artifact gifted to the wizard Pseudomonas by the gods. One day, Pseudomonas got corrupted by an unknown mutation, and he started to use the Plasmid for evil. That is when the gods intervened and destroyed the artifact. Pseudomonas was defeated, but the healing magic was lost along with the Plasmid. It is the task of the players to enter the ruins of Pseudomonas' Palace, find the shards of the Plasmid, and return the flow of healing magic to the Gutlands.

After this adventure one-shot players should understand what a plasmid is, and what the parts of a plasmid do.

Players should understand that a promoter activates the coded region, the coded region contains a gene with a desired effect, a reporter uses fluorophores to signal activation, a killswitch can terminate use of the plasmid and reason why a killswitch is needed for the biosafety. Besides this, players should be able to engage in conversation about the need for safety measures such as a killswitch, and argue for or against the integration of a killswitch in a plasmid.

We ran this adventure two times within the timeframe of iGEM for a total of six players, and are planning to play at least a third session, as four more players have expressed interest. As it turns out, there are plenty of people in our social circles who are excited to play DnD. Although many of them may have just been in it for the fun of DnD, it was interesting to see how naturally the educational parts of the adventure flowed into the gameplay. When players were made aware the world was a metaphor for the functioning of a genetically modified bacterial cell residing in the gut, there were several instances where players asked for clarification on how the allegorical world reflected the reality of synthetic biology. Because of this curiosity, the DM was able to incorporate education beyond the goals as initially described.

We got feedback from the players that the game was very fun to play and they had a great time doing so. We did hear that some concepts were still a bit complicated for those with no background knowledge on synthetic biology at all. From this, we learned that the balance between fun and education may have swayed a bit more to the fun side, where players were actually looking for the educational parts as well. Because of this, we edited the explanations of the plasmid parts to be a bit clearer in the play guide, which can be found under our resources page along with the adventure maps. The adventure can be played using the free to play rules of 5th edition DnD.

The zebrafish larvae model is not commonplace in iGEM, yet it is a very translational non-animal model. Working with zebrafish larvae (<5 dpf) has been a long learning process that involved a lot of tedious research, missteps, and talking to our supervisors. From our experience we came to the conclusion that a handbook with basic information about this model is needed, since it is a lot more difficult to find information about zebrafish larvae as opposed to adult fish.

iGEM Outreach

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In the course of our iGEM project, we attended several events where we got the opportunity to present our project and receive feedback. We don't consider these events to be greatly educational for the listeners as we only talked about our project, but we took these events along in our education as we were the ones that learned a lot from these events.

SynBioNL

We had the chance to present our project pitch at the 2025 SynBioNL event. At this point we were working on the initial project proposal, so the pitch was not final. It did, however, already include the expected zebrafish work that was essential to our project. After our pitch, we were approached by an iGEM ambassador from Frankfurt, who had a conversation with us about what exactly we wanted to do with zebrafish, and the potential difficulties that could arise from that. This conversation was the starting point of our extended research into zebrafish literature, protocols and guidelines, culminating in the zebrafish guidebook found under the resources page.

Apart from this, we were able to meet several other iGEM teams, and exchange ideas about our initial project pitches. Not only that, but we were able to establish valuable connections that would lead to later collaborations.

Center of Living Technology - 2025 Dutch iGEM Meet Up

Utrecht University helped host the 2025 Dutch iGEM Meet, and our team was able to present our project thus far. This was a very valuable moment, as we were able to exchange ideas and feedback with other iGEM teams from The Netherlands and Belgium. Their questions helped us consider some safety concerns we had not previously addressed in our project, and we integrated this by implementing more controls in our design. Besides this, we got hands-on experience with hosting an event, as our team was responsible for the initial setup and registration for the event.

Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences (MCLS) Symposium and Drug Innovation

In order to support education in synthetic biology and ensure continuity within the iGEM Utrecht community, we participated in the MCLS symposium organized for first year students in molecular life sciences, and Drug Innovation master introduction day. Through these events, we had the chance to both promote iGEM and synthetic biology, and showcase the research we conducted within GutFeeling.

Our team leaders Eva and Vlad represented iGEM Utrecht at these events, presenting a poster and answering the students’ questions. The poster introduced both iGEM (the competition, its rules and structure, the project timeline, etc.) and synthetic biology in the context of our research. The students were genuinely interested to see how they could potentially kickstart their own ideas in a future iGEM team and explore the vast field of synthetic biology!

Taking part in these events was a great opportunity for our education team to engage with curious minds and discover where there are gaps in the students’ understanding of synthetic biology. Moreover, we were able to grow our reach within the local student community and broaden the network of iGEM Utrecht.