The BioBits Project

Providing engaging hands-on activities to teach molecular and synthetic biology in low-resource classrooms

BioBits’ mission is to make molecular and synthetic biology fun and accessible to everyone, especially those in low-resource classrooms. Molecular and synthetic biology are difficult to teach, since the concepts cannot be seen by eye and are usually represented with abstract diagrams in textbooks. Some schools have introduced hands-on activities and experiments, such as amplifying and analyzing DNA or growing cells that glow green, that illustrate these concepts in real life and facilitate understanding of the material. Unfortunately, such activities are limited to schools with ample resources – these kinds of biology experiments require expensive and complex equipment and supplies to ensure proper biocontainment of live microorganisms and to prevent spoiling of biological components. These kinds of requirements are prohibitively costly and complicated for less affluent schools, meaning that many students will miss out of the benefits of these hands-on activities. We believe that everyone deserves access to quality biology education, regardless of their resources, and that is why we aim to provide products that can bridge this gap.

To tackle this, we have developed a variety of low-cost, hands-on, just-add-water experiments to teach biology concepts, such as what DNA is and how proteins are made. To help teachers efficiently integrate these activities into their classroom, we will create 1) a set of low-cost kits based on these activities, including all necessary reagents and equipment, and 2) an open-source free database of suggested lesson plans that accompany each kit, allowing the teachers to mix-and-match lessons and activities to create their own curriculum that fits their needs. We plan to further engage educators by encouraging them to provide their own versions of worksheets and lesson plans they created for their classrooms to help grow the curriculum resources further.  We are currently in the prototype phase, where we are 1) producing an initial set of prototype kits to be tested in local Cambridge/Boston/Chicago classrooms and 2) working with local Cambridge/Boston/Chicago educators to develop the initial set of lesson plans to populate the curriculum database. After the initial test, we plan on expanding to other US locations.

Because we will make the database publically available online and distributing the kits at cost at a price point of ~$100, we believe we can reach and impact students across the country and even around the world. These kits can be easily distributed and used in any setting, making it ideal for improving biology understanding globally. Facilitating better understanding of biology is not just beneficial for students, but also for our society: scientific literacy allows the general public to make informed decisions about biology-related issues, such as gene editing or GMOs. Furthermore, if these lessons can inspire students to consider a career in biology, this can increase future scientific advancements and innovations. By making these hands-on activities more accessible, the world can benefit from better understanding of biology.

(All videos links in this application are private until 08/01/18 due to journal embargo restrictions. Judges, please check back after 08/01/18 to view the videos.)

Our activities use freeze-dried, cell-free technology (FD-CF; described below) to allow students to express a variety of proteins that illustrate different biology concepts. This technology was previously used for low-cost diagnostic development, but the application to education is innovative. While there are other hands-on activities that teach similar concepts on the market, these still require the use of live cells and expensive equipment/reagents. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that someone is using FD-CF to develop activities that are easy-to-use and inexpensive to teach molecular and synthetic biology in a classroom setting.

Similar to how an engine can still work if taken out of a car, FD-CF systems take all the essential cellular machinery (such as polymerases, ribosomes, and transcription factors) out of cells into its own functional cell-free reaction for protein expression. This circumvents the need to grow live cells in a classroom. These reactions can also be freeze-dried to form pellets that are stable at room temperature, eliminating the need for specialized freezers for storage. Students simply have to add water to use the FD-CF components to turn DNA into proteins, making this system both easy to use and inexpensive. 

Over the next year, we have four goals: 1) to develop a set of prototype kits (complete with the necessary curriculum and hardware) that teachers and students can beta-test in their classrooms, 2) to form an organization within the biology community dedicated to transforming research into educational activities using the FD-CF platform, 3) raise funding to support our efforts through grants and donations, and 4) based on the feedback from beta-testing, finalize an initial kit that will be packaged and distributed to those schools or teachers who would like to use these activities in their classrooms. 

Over the next few years, we would like to 1) expand the manufacturing and distribution capability to provide kits not just nationwide, but also worldwide, 2) develop a line of distinct kits to teach a range of molecular and synthetic biology concepts for all levels of education, and 3) further build up a community around our mission, where scientists can help further develop modules based on their research or teachers can contribute relevant curriculum based on their teaching experiences. This will allow us to reach a greater number of people over time and have their contributions grow our mission further.

Our target communities are schools, especially those in low-resource areas. We will tap into the news resources of the educational community (i.e. social media or educational journals) to promote our products, and interested schools can purchase the kits at-cost or lower through our website. We will collaborate with organizations, such as STEM outreach groups, to hold free teachers workshops using our kits to demonstrate their use in classrooms. Through user feedback and contributions to our BioBits community, we will develop quality products, ensuring that teachers continue to use them and retaining their interest through development of new kits. 

We are currently serving 10 teachers (and their students) who teach high school biology at 7 schools in the Boston/Cambridge/Chicago area by providing them with free beta-tester kits. The teaching styles and resources in this group vary, allowing us to demonstrate feasibility of the kit in many different classroom situations. As beta-testers for our prototype kits, and through participating in the kits’ activities, the students more easily visualize the biology concepts they are learning and actually are able to conduct experiments using this knowledge. Most importantly, the students find the activities engaging, which helps develop their interest in the sciences. 

In a year, we hope to reach ~50 schools across the country, who will use the kits, use the open-source curriculum to tailor the activities to their classrooms, and contribute feedback and content. In 3 years, we hope to reach hundreds of schools across the country, especially those in more isolated/low-resource areas (by identifying these communities and reaching out specifically to them). Due to the hands-on nature of these kits and initial feedback, we expect to see an immediate increase in interest and understanding of biology from students, which will ideally translate to additional benefits for these students post-secondary.

We have expertise of the FD-CF technology that the product is based on, allowing us to clearly explain how our product works and how it solves many common issues with current hands-on biology activities. We are also very passionate about STEM outreach and advocacy and will be attracting the necessary resources and support from teachers, scientists, or organizations with similar passions, who understand the importance of improving biology education and will help us build a community around our Biobits mission. Finally, our location in Cambridge/Boston/Chicago allows us to access many potential partnerships with biotech/biology-related companies interested in STEM outreach.

We estimate that the target unit cost (the cost of making and distributing a single kit, with enough reagents for an entire 30-40 student classroom and all of the relevant hardware, equipment, and supplies) is $100. Since we are a research team at academic institutions targeting low-resource communities, we are not allowed to (nor do we want to) profit from kit sales, so our target sales price will be at most equal to our target unit cost. Since this target unit cost number does not include the cost of labor, only materials, we will need outside donations and funding to offset labor costs related to manufacturing, distribution, and administration. For our first year, we estimate we will need $65,000 to offset these costs. As we grow and scale our model, these costs will also likely increase, but will still be sustainable, as the components of the kits can easily be scaled up and produced in a basic laboratory setting and there is already a high demand for our product from local schools. We also have received much interest from larger companies, who would like to partner with us to offset our costs needed for further expansion and sustainability.

We are applying to Solve to raise visibility of our solution. We want our target community of teachers and schools to hear about our products and be able to use it if they are interested, and Solve can help connect us to that community. Furthermore, we will be able to network with individuals through Solve who guide us on logistics of our organization and provide advice to sustain and expand our work. Finally, any funding obtained from Solve can help offset the labor costs of FD-CF reagent production, allowing us to provide the kits at-cost. 

The key barrier for BioBits will be obtaining enough funding to support our manufacturing and distribution needs and meet the initial demand from the teachers and schools at a price that they can afford. Solve can help with this by not only providing funding to help us get off the ground, but also connect me to the people and resources to provide advice on how to manage our organization to ensure future funding, sustainability, and expansion. In addition, Solve can also provide more visibility for our project to help attract more funding and resources.