How the Innovative Genomics Institute is Furthering CRISPR Science Communication (with Podcast)

Essentially, science communicators are the middle ground between complex scientific concepts and the general public. They have the experience to fully understand the science they write about, and the skills to communicate the information to those without a science background. Science communicators are key to preventing the spread of ideas about the unrealistic dangers of science, like those seen in TV or movies about CRISPR.

1. Megan Hochstrasser (@thecrispress)

Hochstrasser is the Science Communications Manager at IGI. She received her Ph.D from UC Berkeley in 2016, and is an expert in molecular biology, structural biology, and CRISPR technology.

2. Dr. Alice Roberts (@thealiceroberts)

Roberts is the Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. After starting her career in the field of clinical medicine, she received her Ph.D in paleopathology from the University of Bristol in 2008. Roberts is well known for presenting several BBC documentaries including Digging for Britain, Origins of Us, and Prehistoric Autopsy.

3. Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox)

Cox is a professor of particle physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. He is best known as the presenter of BBC’s series Wonders of Life, in which he explains the science behind things like gravity, sight, and the senses.

4. Elizabeth Bonnin (@lizbonni)

Bonnin is a biochemist and and animal biologist with BSc in biochemistry from Trinity College Dublin, and an MSc in wild animal biology and conservation from the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Veterinary College. She is known for hosting programs like Bang Goes the Theory, and Science Friction which look at taboo scientific topics.

If you’re looking for more places to learn about science from other great science communicators, check out this awesome list of the top CRISPR journalists.

Science communicators help scientists explain their research and findings to non-scientists in simpler terms, spread the word about new discoveries, and make sure that accurate information is presented.

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With misinformation, skepticism, and fake news running rampant these days, science communicators assist with easing the public’s fears, reactions, and assumptions.

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While a science communicator’s main audience may be the general public, they can also assist with communication to people within the scientific community.

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The IGI presents information using a variety of media types including videos and 3D virtual reality. These technologies are changing the way scientific information is presented, and may help non-scientists gain a deeper understanding of scientific topics, especially when it comes to CRISPR, or how science is helping advance medicine.

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While some scientific topics don’t always captivate the interest of the general public, science communicators help people realize how exciting and interesting these topics are, and can often change their perspective.

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It can be really hard to get messages out and make sure they're reliable, so if you want to make a big difference in the world, you need people to understand what you're doing, not feel like you're doing it behind their back, and communicate along the way.

Megan: My general strategy with IGI's sci-comm has been to diversify the media that we use, and not to exclusively use written forums. We try to have a lot of videos, and make use of more innovative or emerging technology. We have a video game called "Phage Invaders," we're working on an augmented-reality app to explore protein structure, and a virtual-reality experience to go do genome editing in cells.

Minu: I have seen those whiteboard videos, and even as someone who is aware of CRISPR and have read a lot about it, I still find them extremely useful. In a lot of our blogs, or even in some of our education materials, I often embed those videos. They are really great, so good job on that!

Megan: Oh, great, thanks. I want to make more. They're fun. They take a lot of work, though.

Minu: Yeah, exactly, I understand the level of dedication the process takes, which is why I haven't gotten around to making any for Synthego! The other communication efforts that you do as well like the video game or the playing cards and things like this are very innovative. I think that you're right in saying that not everyone learns in the same way, so there are more reasons for people to learn from you and the IGI because the communication is done in so many different ways.

Megan: We're trying to become a kind of ‘hub’ that has different resources that work for different kinds of people. Because not everyone wants to learn in the same way or is interested in the same things, we basically do two categories of sci-comm.

Our main one is mostly online resources, so very widely-accessible electronic communication. One example of that would be the whiteboard videos, we've been making a few of those recently. Those are really fun, because we work with high school students sometimes, and mostly undergrad students here at Berkeley to do the actual drawing and mapping out of the video. Those are the videos where you see someone's hand frantically drawing and sped-up on a whiteboard to illustrate a scientific concept. They're really fun because they integrate visual communication with a really concise script and little animations.

Megan: We have this program called "Ask a Scientist," where we connect these random requests from students that we get to volunteer scientists who want to kind of hone their chops at doing sci-comm and talk to the public. We will Skype in with a classroom, for example, or just do a one-on-one phone call, answer things via email, that kind of thing. We do a lot of events like tours and field trips.

We recently did a community science day, just outside the building here, which was really cool. We had virtual reality there, kids were making DNA models out of candy, and we had a photo booth where they could dress up in lab coats, which was really adorable. We try to hit it on both sides with local things in the community, as well as the more widely-accessible online content.

Minu: Right. And do you have a preferred method of communication between all of these?

Megan: Not really. I like science writing a little bit, but I think any time I can avoid having exclusively written communication, I like it. I really like visuals, and more fun things like that.

It can't all be fun, though, because a lot of what we're talking about are serious diseases, and medical situations. I think that's kind of interesting to think about how to make that kind of content stimulating without it being cheesy or geeky to the extent that it's offensive in some way.

We try to balance the serious message that we're really doing important work here that's going to help people, with making it accessible and interesting to people.

Learn about how scientists and science communicators interact, and how science communicators can facilitate communication between scientists and non-scientists.

Minu: Apart from "Ask a Scientist," how are the scientists at Berkeley actually involved in any of the partnering institutes involved in IGI communication? Do you reach out specifically, or is it assumed that they'll help?

Megan: I've found a lot of different people that are really interested in talking to people in the public or students. I think a lot of people very much aren't, and that's fine too. I do think science communication is a great skill to have regardless of what you're doing, though, because even if you're just going to write research papers and you're never going to talk to anyone in the public, you want to be able to make your research exciting to other researchers, and accessible.

I sometimes see papers that are in Science, Nature, or Cell, and I know they should matter, but I try to look at them and they're impenetrable to read. It's just a lot of heat maps, or things that I can't totally grasp in the amount of time that I have for it. I think being able to make your title and abstract at least demonstrate that some of your message is important is key, and I think it's just a really valuable skill to have in general to become respected in your field and make what you're doing accessible to other people.

Minu: I absolutely agree, and I think even a slight difference with just the graphical abstract has made a huge difference in the understanding of the papers. It's a small initiative, but things like this emphasize why we need communication, and why scientists should at least try. Not everyone's going to be great at it, but they should make the effort to communicate, or at least contribute to communications to help spread the word about their research.

What's the point of keeping it in the lab? I absolutely agree, it's very essential, and I'm glad that more and more scientists are now realizing the benefits and importance of this; in participating in these events, or even with online resources.

Megan: We've had a lot of really helpful people reach out that just want to get involved to do something, or when we do ask for volunteers, we usually can get quite a few good people. Never enough, but people can be great, and we've been trying to offer more training for things. It's kind of hard, but I'm interested in expanding the sort of communications training that we offer to at least IGI scientists, and hopefully beyond, in the future.

We're working with them, and a company from Oakland called Dynamoid, to create a virtual reality experience where the user is wearing the whole virtual reality headset, and they get to dive into a human body. The intention of this one is first, to show how sickle-cell disease works, and second, how it could be treated using genome editing.

This is a really cool platform because you can see at all levels how the disease would affect somebody. We have a simulated patient and a human body, and you can zoom in to different levels of magnification; you can see the body level, the tissue, you can go inside the blood vessel and see the red blood cells moving around behind you, you can see in the sickle cell, you can see the shape, you can see the mutation at the DNA level, you can see it at the protein level, you can see how it makes the hemoglobin aggregate, and you can see how it (the aggregated hemoglobin) distorts the cell shape.

I think it's a cool way to teach how a disease happens, especially a genetic disease, because I think it sounds very abstract to have a typo in some DNA that people don't really understand, and it's hard to see how that would affect some really big, zoomed-out macro thing like red blood cells, and circulation.

The genome-editing side of it is kind of a plus. Once you've established that you understand how sickle-cell is working, you can actually go in and trigger Cas9 to target the hemoglobin mutation and replace it with a healthy copy. Then you can see how you might cure a patient.

I'm really excited about that because I think it can work on so many different levels. If you're an elementary-school student, you're probably not going to get to the CRISPR part; you're probably just going to see what it's like to go inside a body and see cells, and learn those basic things. If you're older though, or perhaps even a sickle-cell patient or a doctor that's talking about a possible CRISPR treatment that we might have one day, you could use this in that context to try to make it more understandable and see how it might work.

I think it'll be really cool, and it will reach even bigger audiences. It's going to be on the planetarium dome at Lawrence Hall, so you won't need to have the VR setup that not a lot of people have. You'll get to be able to go there, and instead of seeing space and stars, which are so boring and passé, you can see cells and the human body. I think it'll be awesome!

Minu: Yeah, I think so too. It's a brilliant idea. When do you think this is scheduled for completion? When can we visit this?

Megan: That's a good question. It's taking a little bit longer than expected, because we just keep working on it and adding new things. But it will probably be accessible in the next couple months, I would say.

It has really advanced a lot, and I'm actually going to test it next week. We have an undergrad journal club that we do every week, and I'm going to test it out with them, and see what the undergrads think of the whole experience. It's getting close, and I think it should be launched soon.

I'm hopeful to be able to use it during field trips and activities like that. Or if visitors come here, I think we should be able to slap the headset on one person and then put what they're seeing on a projector so everyone can see it and simultaneously have the experience.