Those working with Drosophila know about the fruit fly’s potential to drive discovery processes in the areas of biomedical sciences, evolution, behavioural science, biophysics or population genetics. But are we aware of how little this tends to be understood by those working with ‘higher’ model organisms and, furthermore, the large group of non-biologists including medics, politicians, journalists or neighbours and family members?
For example, have you got an effective, gripping and understandable elevator pitch ready that explains your research (and the enabling role of Drosophila within) to lay audiences, such as your family, a politician or journalist? (and have you considered that such a pitch might work extremely well also with grant panels?)
There are important reasons for engaging with the wide range of non-drosophilist/biologist audiences and build bridges toward a better understanding through science communication, science education and advocacy. However, to do this efficiently, we have to have ..
.. a realistic view of the strengths of the fly as a model, its feasible applications but also limitations;
.. awareness of the conceptual knowledge gaps that hold specific target audiences back from seeing and appreciating the opportunities and specific advantages provided by fly research;
.. an understanding of the strategies and modalities that can be used to raise curiosity and catch attention of particular target audiences;
.. an awareness of resources readily available to you that can facilitate and speed up any audience engagements – ensuring hat the wheel is not re-invented over and over again.
In the following, links are provided to resources, either directly or to hubs of information where respective links have been collated for you.
AVAILABLE RESOURCES
Drosophila as a model organism:
Training: a self study-based Drosophila genetics training package including a comprehensive introduction to all basics and training tasks — (LINK)
I FLY BIO – Drosophila basics and genetic tools — (LINK)
“Why fly?” on droso4public: ideas and arguments — (LINK)
“Why fly?” on droso4schools: ideas and arguments — (LINK)
An advocacy article addressing politicians — (LINK and as GSA blog)
Websites:
Manchester Fly Facility (droso4research) / Training – resources that reach out to university students and scientists not working with fly — (LINK)
droso4schools – support site for school outreach and education resources of the Manchester Fly Facility, all using Drosophila as teaching tool — (LINK)
droso4public – collating useful links and information to support you during Drosophila advocacy and public outreach — (LINK)
Fly Indonesia – official site of the Fly Indonesia initiative aiming to establish Drosophila as a research strategy in that country — (LINK)
droso4Nigeria – promoting Drosophila in Nigerian universities and schools — (LINK)
droso4LatAm – promoting Drosophila in Latin American universities and schools — (LINK)
Manchester Fly Facility Resources 2 – Biology lessons for schools using the fruit fly Drosophila — (LINK)
Manchester Fly Facility Resources 3 – Resources for communicating Drosophila research in schools and on science fairs. figshare, m9.figshare.4262921 — (LINK)
#MelanogasterCTF – citizen science project in the area of population genetics — (LINK)
Drosophila Research & Training Centre – Drosophila outreach and training in Nigeria — (LINK)
I FLY BIO – Drosophila basics and genetic tools — (LINK)
FLYING THRU SCIENCE – insightful blog posts about fly research — (LINK)
I am currently writing papers based on data obtained by people of my group that partly date back more than 15 years. Astonishingly, I can easily find and reproduce all of these data and feed them into GraphPad for state-of-the-art analyses and graph design. This is possible mainly because, from early on, we introduced simple standardised measures of data filing used by all members of the group.
A simple and transparent naming and identifier system:
Data management is a general challenge that requires discipline and simple consistent rules that are easy to follow.
As shown in the image, each experiment has its own folder named starting with the date the experiment was initiated, potentially followed by a letter (if more than one experiment began the same day) and using hyphen and underscore consistently: “21-08-29A_”. This number code is the identifier for this experiment, and all documents in this folder (see below) will start with this date and number.
To quickly browse through experiments, all folders are situated in one “Experiments” folder (rather than subfolders that group experiments in subjective ways), so that they line all up by date and can be quickly scanned for content by using their concise experimental descriptors. To provide these descriptors, the folder names contain key information about the experiment using shortcut that is common to members of our group: e.g. “21-08-29A_Khc8Df_tub-Syt_ConA_3DIV” [Date/identifier_genotype (Kinesin heavy chain8/Df)_antibodies used (tubulin-Synaptotagmin)_primary neurons cultured on concanavalin A_for 3 days in vitro]. We usually perform two sets of experiments and, if consistent, pool the data; the second experimental folder of this pairing will contain the pooled analysis and is named accordingly: e.g. “21-09-13_Khc8Df_tubSyt_ConA_3DIV-POOL”. This naming system enables efficient identification of needed experimental folders in a matter of seconds.
A simple and transparent system of storing experimental information Each folder contains an explanatory document with the same name as the folder. It has three purposes: (1) promoting proper planning of the experiment, (2) making sure the experiment has been properly executed and closed, and (3) ensuring that the experiment and its outcomes are understandable even years later. Our ‘blanco’ document contains the following items:
date/identifier: see above
rationale/objective: as a rule of thumb, we should never perform experiments we do not understand or do not agree to. In both cases we should engage in further discussion – before time is invested in vain. To this end, writing an experimental rationale/objective of 1-3 sentences is a good check point, and it provides a narrative that can be understood many years later.
Experimental specimens used, such as
genotype (how identified, what controls)
developmental stage
Experimental procedures, such as
culture procedures: e.g. citing the file name of the specific protocol that will be/was used (which is usually stored in a dedicated “Documents” folder, tracking changes that are introduce over time as different versions), but listing potential deviations from that protocol
primary/secondary antibody combinations including concentrations and animals of origin
Documentation, such as
storage information: e.g. slide box/slot numbers of slides, specific links to online repositories
image plates generated
Results: describing quality of the experiment, observations, statistical analysis, pooled analyses
Conclusion: as a rule of thumb, an experiment should never be considered finished without having drawn a clear conclusion: e.g. a clear outcome, the need to repeat the experiment with different parameters, or a clear reasoning as to why this approach does not work and the fundamental strategy needs to be changed.
The explanatory document is the centerpiece of each folder and is accompanied by all other experiment-related files, such as image files, Excel sheets, statistics documents etc. Importantly, all document names should start with the date/identifier! This will allow you to copy these image or data files into different locations (e.g. when preparing publications or theses) but having an easy way to refer back to their original source if further information is needed.
At The University of Manchester, we are in the lucky situation that institutional backup server space is provided, which is good practice that will hopefully become standard at all universities. Members of my group usually store their ‘Experiment’ and ‘Protocol’ folders on an external hard disc that can shuffle between work and home, but use FreeFileSync as a reliable and efficient open source software (providing automatic updates upon a one-off donation) to make regular backups to the external server. In this way, all members of the group have access at any time, can share results easily and leave them behind as their legacy when moving on to other jobs.
Extending this model towards student project supervision To help students organise their work and facilitate communication during supervision, we have developed our data storage model further, in that students maintain a summary document. This document can be sent to me in preparation of supervisory meetings, and it helps students to maintain an overview of their project – hence to keep a clear mind and prevent sudden panic attacks of the “I do not have enough data for my thesis” kind. As I tend to tell students: “If you keep this document up-to-date, the results part of your report/thesis is mostly written, just needs to be arranged into a meaningful order.” The document is broken down into at least four parts:
Brainstorm: Any ideas that might arise, be it during discussions, under the shower, on the way to uni or during reading, should immediately be inserted as a bullet point into the brainstorm section. It is key to equip each item with a brief rationale (we had various cases where we could not reconstruct the idea behind an experiment) and key ideas how the experiment could be performed. In our supervisory meetings we usually go through this list and set priorities for next steps.
Ongoing: Experiments that have been started are entered here or dragged over from the Brainstorm list. The aim is to provide a quick insight into how things are progressing, such as providing the experimental identifiers of completed sets of experiments with a brief statement as to what the major outcome appears to be. This serves as a quick summary describing the state of ongoing work, so that supervisory meetings are less about reporting but more about interpretation and focussing on the next steps.
Completed: Once experiments are completed, including data pooling and a clear conclusion, they can be dragged into the ‘Completed’ section. Since data and thoughts about your experiments are fresh in your mind at this stage, this is the time to insert data from your experimental document and edit the results and conclusions in ways that can readily be used in the report/thesis. It is essential to always list the experimental identifiers, so that more detailed information can be easily retrieved from the respective experiment folder if required. At this stage, you could also bring all graphs to publication standard and potentially select representative images which can be stored, for example, in the experimental folder (but clearly indicating in the ‘Completed’ section where to find them). Performing these tasks at this stage may take you half an hour or hour, but should be more efficient than performing them during the final writing stage where you first have to re-introduce yourself to the data – apart from the fact that these tasks will pile up to a huge work load that distracts from the actual writing. If all experiments are prepared in this way, the section can evolve over time: different sets of experiments can be grouped into higher order statements, and by-and-by first sub-headings can be written. I have made good experiences with keeping all this info in bullet point format so that it can be shifted around and played with. Furthermore, it does not harm to insert relevant references at this stage (or even in the experimental document), saving you the effort of having to ‘re-discover’ them at a later stage.
Discussion: As is the case for experimental ideas in the ‘Brainstorm’ section, any thoughts (your own or from the literature), topics or problems that seem appropriate/helpful for the Discussion, should be listed as bullet points whenever they surface. Ideas come out of nowhere but are quickly forgotten, and it is a great feeling to have them saved as a repository to work from when reaching the writing stage. Important: never throw away any bullet points from the ‘Completed’ or ‘Discussion’ sections, but rather shift them into a spare section (I call it ‘Tidbits’). Those points might seem obsolete at a certain time – but could turn into an unforeseen gem that fills a crucial gap at a later stage.
I hope some of these thoughts are useful, and any suggestions are of course most welcome. Some people might regard this procedure micro-management, but I do not see it this way. Ownership of the process lies with the lab members, and it is an opportunity to optimise data management and supervisory communication. I can say from experience that these procedures, if adhered to with discipline, are enormously time-saving in the long run and guarantee transparency and accessibility for decades – so that data that would otherwise never see the light of day, will get published in the end. Notably, this system of data management is independent of any dedicated software, hence highly flexible to use. Furthermore, I have seen students panicking that did not follow this path, and others executing final experiments until a couple of weeks before their submission deadline, since they knew that things were under control.
This blog post was written in its original version for PLOS | BLOGS. Changes here are minor and mainly comprise changes to hyperlinks.
Is the current scicomm culture a lame duck?
Science communication (scicomm) has become a buzz term in the current science landscape. I fully support its importance and have been a scicomm “activist” for over 8 years, propagating the importance of fundamental biomedical research and the use of the fruit fly (Drosophila) as an important pillar within (see rationale). I have contributed to many science fairs and school visits, organised the Brain Box fair with over 5K visitors, am the driver of the Manchester Fly Facility‘s droso4schools and droso4public initiatives, co-initiator of Fly Indonesia and droso4Nigeria, was the chair of the science communication committee of Fly Board, the communications officer of the British Society for Developmental Biology running an advocacy campaign together with The Node and setting up the BSDB archive with now ~46K item downloads, published over 50 scicomm articles, blogs, websites and online repositories (LINK), and edited/published a recent special journal issue on scicomm in the biomedical sciences with over 40K article downloads since 2017.
However, I still find it difficult to say whether I have made any long-term impact – have I changed any behaviours? For example, my very well-attended plenary talk at a European fruit fly conference aiming to inspire the community about scicomm, was much applauded, but had no impact on viewer metrics of our key resource sites – not even short term. Similarly, it is easy to get carried away by likes and shares when spinning out ideas and resources across social media, but online metrics then usually reveal that very few have actually opened the links they liked or shared!
Notwithstanding, I stay a believer in the major opportunities and the urgent need for scicomm, but also that we need to re-think our approaches, as will be explained in the following.
A need for multi-faceted dialogue
Defining scicomm and its many different facets is not easy. In my interpretation, it means establishing dialogue (in a variety of modalities) between practicing scientists (called “scientists” from now on) and a wide range of target groups to resolve reciprocal misconceptions, learn from one another and achieve mutual benefit. Direct engagement of scientists with the wider public is usually done at science fairs, school visits, public presentations, etc. Many of these activities tend to be short-lived one-offs that reach a limited amount of people and, at first glance, may appear to be relatively low on ‘impact.’ However, there are opportunities if we open up to dialogue! Genuine engagement with pupils, teachers or visitors at a science fair can be a sobering exercise: the responses you receive make absolutely clear what topics and arguments come across, excite and are perceived as being important – and it is the “thumbs down” responses which should make us think about our own science! To put it bluntly: if you cannot explain your science and its importance, you either have not thought hard enough and need to refine your explanations, or you are doing the wrong thing and should consider changes in your research direction! If we use scicomm in this way, it will help to align our science with the wider society in the long term; this can be taken even a step further through citizenscience and other forms of actively involving the public in our research. Furthermore, it will provide the refined explanations and elevator pitches with which to advocate our science and engage with journalists to achieve improved and helpful press outlets, or with funding organisations and decision makers to influence science policy in a positive way. Even more, they provide profound rationales and simple narratives that will be similarly powerful when presenting our own science in grant applications, talks and publications.
Important aspects of scicomm lie in the hands of journalists or teachers. Scientists tend to have little influence on article or school lesson contents, although journalists reach audiences in their millions, and students at schools are the potential future scientists and will constitute and shape the future society which we would wish to embrace science. To engage in true dialogue with schools, scientists (and especially those working in basic research) have a deep understanding of topics that lie at the heart of school education. This offers powerful opportunities to carry the spirit of science into schools and the wider society. However, to do this in meaningful ways, we need to listen to and collaborate with teachers and school policymakers to understand and adapt to the realities of school life and the requirements of teachers. In analogous ways, we must establish efficient dialogue with journalists to achieve high quality outcome with a clear view to press outlets that are mutually beneficial, i.e. exciting and entertaining whilst being scientifically sound and balanced.
Finally, we need dialogue within our science communities. Harmful metrics, counterproductive expectations, bureaucracy, a shift in public opinion, and harmful publishing policies “bully us into bad science” by promoting self-focussed communities and mechanisms that inhibit true progress and passion for science (Lawrence; Cohen; Young; Smaldino; Martínez-Arias; Nerlich). As part of the current adverse developments, basic biomedical research (which is the life-blood for clinical application in the long term) is increasingly sidelined in favour of applied and clinical research expected to generate revenue or quality-of-life improvements in the nearer future. Unfortunately, those few scientists who climbed the podium of success and obtained influential positions often feel no need to change what works for them, whilst many are kept too busy trying to stay afloat to find the time for taking action. Also here, dialogue offers opportunities to rectify short-term thinking through intelligent and well-framed dialogue with policy makers, funding organisations, publishers, as well as clinicians to achieve inclusion and collaboration towards higher quality science, rather than harmful competition for funding and recognition. Initiatives such as bulliedintobadscience.org (campaigning for a fairer research environment), our online campaign or an advocacy article series in the journal Development (both advocating developmental biology), or a recent eLife article (using history of science and social science arguments to discredit current policies) are good examples of scicomm within science communities.
Objective-driven long-term initiatives as an opportunity to establish dialogue
Cover art by Matt Girling for the special issue on scicomm in the biomedical sciences. See figure legend in the editorial.
The catalogue of urgent communication tasks waiting to be addressed is impressive, to a degree that sticking our heads in the sand and carrying on as usual seems the only feasible response. As Sam Illingworth and I argued in an F1000R paper, isolated activities by scientists are hardly enough to address these scicomm challenges, also considering that we operate in a rather territorial landscape of scicomm, where science and funding organisations, politicians and publishers, scicomm practicioners and scholars, show little tendency to collaborate and develop common objectives and frameworks. Nevertheless, I am convinced that scientists can achieve positive developments, but this will require long-term thinking, clear objective-setting and the formation of scicomm networks within research communities, where many little contributions can lead to gradual development of constantly improving resources, strategies, momentum and impact, thus achieving a lot for the community.
To show that this is feasible and how it can be put in practice, Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology kindly invited us to publish the special journal issue “Science communication in the field of fundamental biomedical research“, which has generously been given free access status to fulfil its purpose of communication and has by now over 40,000 article downloads. As is explained in greater detail in the editorial, six articles describe objective-driven, long-term initiatives which were set up by biologists to engage in the various kinds of dialogue mentioned above; two articles describe how to develop multi-facetted strategies and resources for wider advocacy and scicomm (one promoting research on fruit flies the other on stem cells); two articles demonstrate how long-term teacher/school collaboration can be achieved leading to the design of curriculum-relevant biology lessons for primary schools and secondary schools; and two articles are concerned with dialogue within science communities, i.e. how to establish collaborations between scientist and clinicians and between scientists in Europe and Africa.
All these initiatives (and many more are listed in Boxes 1 and 2 of the editorial) demonstrate how long-term objective setting can provide the creative space and time to achieve momentum and impact through gradually developing and improving scicomm strategies and resources, establishing helpful and often interdisciplinary collaborations, developing an online presence and strategies for sustainability (e.g. obtaining funding, achieving recognition and reward). Whilst this is clearly more than can be achieved by isolated scicomm activities, another two articles in our special issue go even a step further by addressing how learned societies can promote scicomm activities and initiatives, and how social platforms (here The Node) can help to create scicomm networks.
Achieving collaborations between scientists and academic science communicators
The special issue also addresses another important problem: the numerous and highly creative scicomm initiatives established by biomedical scientists are rarely published by biology or scicomm journals. As a consequence, this rich pool of strategies and resources is not being explained and shared and has little chance to inspire others to participate in scicomm or improve their strategies. Furthermore, those driving the initiatives miss out on publications as the main career currency for academic scientists. As discussed in our editorial, many biology journals seem to fail to see the importance of these initiatives for their field, whereas scicomm journals usually want to see statistical support and evidence (which scientists hardly have the time to deliver).
We therefore pioneered a new path of publication by recommending to authors of our special issue a descriptive and less evidence-based style, with the main objective of sharing experiences and aiming to generate a helpful and much needed scicomm strategy resource. Many of these scicomm initiatives were developed out of individual intuition, thus providing colourful diversity. This offers fantastic opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration with academic science communicators (called “communicators” from now on). For example, by comparing and contrasting initiatives, communicators might identify new strategies that work well in practice, and through collaboration with scientists they would have opportunities to test theoretical concepts in practical application. This, in turn, would introduce scientists to academic concepts of scicomm (and make them aware that such concepts even exist!), thus enriching their strategy pools. To build such interdisciplinary bridges, two articles in our special issue provide advice on general scicomm practice and on evaluation; these are written by communicators in a language accessible to non-specialists – thus avoiding the current problem that field-specific publication styles can form a barrier to interdisciplinary collaboration.
In conclusion, the challenges of making science an integral part of society requires unremitting dialogue in many directions for which scientists hardly find the time. However, the strategies highlighted here provide solutions by focussing on long-term strategies, clear objective-setting, interdisciplinary collaboration and, ultimately, the formation of scicomm networks sharing resources and workload and maximising the outcome. As mentioned above, I still find it difficult to measure potential impact regarding my own participation in scicomm. However, I also feel that more and more people start lending their support (see our impact document) and maintain the hope that persistent continuation with our initiatives will lead to the necessary dynamics that will eventually result in the formation of scicomm networks – with a realistic chance of achieving a better understanding and acceptance of basic biomedical research in society.
This blog post was originally published in the Journal Open Access Government. and provides a concise overview of the rationales for fruit fly research in the biomedical sciences.
Prologue: an impressive past and presence
For 30 years I have been studying the nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the tiny insect that hovers over our fruit bowls in summer (Prokop, 2016). You may wonder why anybody would invest professional time or public money in something that seems more of a private hobby than serious research. But I am not alone: fruit flies have been intensively studied for over 100 years, and worldwide over 10.000 scientists are currently estimated to engage in fly research; and their work has great impact: nine (arguably ten) researchers have received a Nobel Prize in ‘Physiology or Medicine’ for their work in Drosophila – the last one as recently as 2017 (Fig. 1). As will be explained here, the biomedical sciences would be very far behind their current status quo without research in fly or other simple organisms, such as the nematode worm C. elegans or baker’s yeast.
Fig. 1 Researchers awarded with the Nobel Prize for work on Drosophila in 1933, 1946, 1995, 2004 (only marginally for fly work), 2011 and 2017. For image sources click here.
Why the fly? A historical perspective
Fig. 2 Flies as an efficient starting point of a translational pipeline.
Kick-starting genetics
Mere serendipity set in motion the long-lasting interest in fruit flies: in 1910, studies on evolution by Thomas Hunt Morgan led to the almost accidental finding that genes lie on chromosomes. This started the era of Genetics – with Drosophila research leading the field unravelling how genes are organised, become mutated or interact with each other (Allchin, 1997; Brookes, 2001; Kohler, 1994).
Genetics as a tool
In the middle of the 20th century, researchers started to use Drosophila genetics to address the essential question of how genes work and determine biology. In the same way as mutations in humans cause inherited diseases that tell us something about the biological relevance of those genes, mutations can be used in Drosophila research as a tool to dissect and understand biological processes. The fly was ideal because genetic manipulation techniques were well established, its generation cycle of only 10 days allowed fast progress, and the ease of keeping big numbers of flies, facilitated systematic ‘mutational screens’ to search for new genes that contribute to biological processes (Fig. 2). Drosophila became “a boundary object par excellence, residing in the interstices of two major disciplines, genetics and embryology” (Keller, 1996). Together with the advent of molecular biology (to decipher and manipulate genes) and advances in biochemistry (to study the protein products of genes), fly research turned into a gold mine for discovery. For example, genes that mediate embryonic development, nervous system function or even the ability to learn were discovered and studied, pioneering fundamental understanding of those processes (Mohr, 2018).
A translational path to humans
Through parallel work in vertebrate animals, in particular the mouse, it became increasingly clear that fundamental concepts discovered in the fly seemed to apply to all animals: genes studied in mammals turned out to be very similar in structure and function to their fly equivalents; in some cases it was even shown that genes from fly and mouse were interchangeable. The scale of this ‘evolutionary conservation’ became clear when the human and fly genomes were sequenced and compared. As Ethan Bier and colleagues commented at the time: “… about 75% of known human disease genes have a recognisable match in the genome of fruit flies” (Reiter et al., 2001). The fundamental truth behind this statement was unequivocally documented by a systematic study using 414 yeast strains with lethal mutations, of which almost half could be ‘cured’ by introducing the equivalent human gene (Kachroo et al., 2015; Leslie, 2015). Therefore, fundamental processes of biology and the genes involved are ancient; organisms that shared their last common ancestor a billion years ago have maintained many of these fundamental functions to astonishing degrees. This concept of ‘deep homology’ explains the above mentioned Nobel laureates: through their work they have laid foundations for fundamental understanding of biological processes which can explain to us what goes wrong in human disease and pave the translational path into the quest for cures.
The importance of Drosophila research is undiminished
The last decades have brought new strategies for research in mice and other vertebrate animals that have now turned also these organisms into true boundary objects. The fairly recent advent of CRISPR technology is widely seen as the magic silver bullet that has finally closed the experimental gap to research in smaller invertebrate models. However, I would argue that this is a dangerous misconception likely leading to increased research costs, unnecessary use of animals and a slow-down in scientific advance.
Hugo Bellen, a renowned and highly successful researcher, was cited to have said: “You get 10 times more biology for a dollar invested in flies than you get in mice” (Levitan, 2015). To illustrate this point, keeping 400 fly stocks requires one stand-alone incubator and £100 a month to pay for food vials and 4-6hrs of work (Fig. 3); maintaining the same number of mouse strains readily accessible would take at least £12.000 a month and a vast housing facility. Furthermore, CRISPR technology certainly has enormously accelerated mouse research, but it is also well established in Drosophila and has enhanced the possibilities of fly research to the same degree. Many more arguments can be listed (Prokop, 2015), but I would like to focus here on one last, enormously important aspect: the fact that biology is complex.
Fig 3. Maintaining and handling flies in the laboratory. A) A ~10 cm high vial containing flies. B) 400 different fly stocks kept in one incubator. Genetic crosses are performed under a stereo microscope (C) on CO2-dispensing porous pads (D) to carefully inspect the immobilised flies (E).
Thus, to understand inherited diseases, it is often not sufficient to gain important knowledge of the affected genes and their products; it requires an understanding of the usually complex functional networks in which they operate (Prokop, 2016). An important strategy to unravel complex genetic networks is the simultaneous manipulation of two or more genes in the same individual – a task that is routinely performed in a fly laboratory, but enormously laborious and time-consuming in mice. Furthermore, experiments, even if based on well-informed rationale, often fail. In fly, such failure is unfortunate but can be easily absorbed, since time and money invested are usually low, with alternative experiments being set up in a matter of days or weeks rather than months or beyond. Hence, work in fly gives access to flexible experimentation, where try-and-error is a feasible strategy to overcome the challenging enigmas posed by biological complexity.
Conclusions
Understanding biology is the lifeblood for translational research into human disease and, as I have argued here, Drosophila research is a powerful generator of such understanding. Certainly, fly is NOT a mini-human. For example, it cannot be used to study arthritis or fibrosis, but it can be used to understand fundamental concepts of extracellular matrix regulation underlying those problems. In the context of Alzheimer’s disease, flies are unsuited to study personality loss, but can be used to address the still unresolved important question of how this condition triggers nerve cells to die. In any case, the use of any experimental models should always be carefully justified. Consequently, funding panels should, in my opinion, more often question the uses of higher animals where fundamental concepts could be pioneered more efficiently in simpler models – thus spending research money responsibly and speeding up the discovery process.
The author, Andreas Prokop, is Professor for Neurobiology at The University of Manchester. As academic head of the ‘Manchester Fly Facility’, and together with his colleague Sanjai Patel, he drives the ‘droso4public’ science communication initiative advocating the wider awareness of fly research (droso4public.wordpress.com). Part of this initiative is the ‘droso4schools’ project (droso4schools.wordpress.com) aiming to establish Drosophila also as a powerful teaching tool in school biology lessons.
Cited literature
Allchin, D. (1997). Thomas Hunt Morgan & the white-eyed mutant. In “Doing Biology (chapter 5)” (J. B. Hagen, D. Allchin, F. Singer, Eds.). Benjamin Cummings — shipseducation.net/db/morgan.htm
Brookes, M. (2001/2002). “Fly: The Unsung Hero of Twentieth-Century Science.” Ecco/Phoenix, — tinyurl.com/y2ub6l8n
Kachroo, A. H., Laurent, J. M., Yellman, C. M., Meyer, A. G., Wilke, C. O., Marcotte, E. M. (2015). Evolution. Systematic humanization of yeast genes reveals conserved functions and genetic modularity. Science348, 921-5 — www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25999509
Keller, E. F. (1996). Drosophila embryos as transitional objects: the work of Donald Poulson and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Hist Stud Phys Biol Sci26, 313-46 — www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11613313
Kohler, R. E. (1994). “Lords of the fly. Drosophila genetics and the experimental life.” The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London — tinyurl.com/y5ahu4s7
Prokop, A. (2016). Fruit flies in biological research. Biological Sciences Review28, 10-14 — tinyurl.com/ybvpoqmw
Reiter, L. T., Potocki, L., Chien, S., Gribskov, M., Bier, E. (2001). A systematic analysis of human disease-associated gene sequences in Drosophila melanogaster. Genome Res11, 1114-25 — http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11381037
This blog post was written for school teachers and will hopefully soon be published on a suitable blog site that reaches teacher audiences. It has been put up here to serve as reference for “droso4schools” activities. It describes our first primary school resources and first event on which we tried them out in their final form, accompanied by evaluation.
Prologue: a need to bring nature into classrooms
Nature is fascinating. One can easily be gripped by the many natural history documentaries engaging us with fascinating insights into the plant and animal world. My kids can still be tempted to watch them together with us, but would unfortunately not pick them if given a free choice. But isn’t it that the more we know about nature around us, the more we care for it? Can schools be a place where to address this challenge? The two lesson resources I am describing here can help teachers to bring natural history spirit and practical science into primary school classrooms whilst teaching the curriculum-relevant topics of life cycle and evolution.
Fig. 1 Some of the insect images used in this resource. For details see our website.
Why I developed these teaching resources
The topics of inheritance, evolution, life cycle and ageing are key specifications of the English KS2 curriculum (Box 1). I learned about all these topics during my traditional university biology education 30 years ago. Although I now work on very different areas of biology, those memories still live on vividly, which is why I am convinced of the powerful influence of early experiences. Such prolonged impact seems to work similarly for pupils at younger age (Archer et al., 2012; Croll, 2008; Maltese and Tai, 2011) emphasising that we must care about excellent school teaching of science and natural history.
describe the differences in the life cycles of a mammal, an amphibian, an insect and a bird
describe the life process of reproduction in some plants and animals
describe how living things are classified into broad groups according to common observable characteristics and based on similarities and differences, including micro-organisms, plants and animals
give reasons for classifying plants and animals based on specific characteristics
describe the changes as humans develop to old age
recognise that living things have changed over time and that fossils provide information about living things that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago
recognise that living things produce offspring of the same kind, but normally offspring vary and are not identical to their parents
identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways and that adaptation may lead to evolution
A second incentive for generating these resources comes from my scientific research based on using Drosophila melanogaster, the tiny fruit flies that hover over our fruit bowls in summer (Prokop, 2016). I use these flies for good reason, because more than a century of intense research have made them the animal organism with the best understood biology on this planet (Prokop, 2018b; Why fly?). This unique understanding offers fantastic opportunities not only for research, but also to enrich biology teaching in schools: with (1) conceptually well understood contents (including all topic areas mentioned in Box 1), (2) many relevant examples and anecdotes, as well as (3) numerous micro-experiments that are easy to perform in classrooms (Manchester Fly Facility, 2015). Astonishingly, many aspects of fly and human biology are so similar that Drosophila research has helped us understand many aspects of our own bodies and even human diseases. This shared biology can be capitalised on in classrooms: for example by first using fly to explain fundamental concepts to then demonstrate how this applies to humans; or to illustrate the concept of common evolutionary roots (see below).
Since we want more people to become aware of the enormous potential of fly research, we launched the “droso4schools” project which actively promotes the introduction of fruit flies as teaching tools in schools. The goal is to improve curriculum-relevant contents whilst creating memorable encounters with flies. Our evaluations clearly show that pupils receive Drosophila and fly-based micro-experiments with great enthusiasm (see our impact document; Fig.11 below).
It is for all these reasons that I developed the two lesson resources described in the following.
Fundamental strategies for our biology classes
On the droso4schools project, university students work as teaching assistants in partner schools for several months (Harbottle et al., 2016; see our film). Through this close involvement we are able to generate sample lessons where we merge our own expertise on biology topics with the professional expertise of teachers, thus incorporating appropriate styles of teaching including differentiation, as well as contents that address the curriculum and assessments.
Fig. 2 Logo of the droso4schools website
Our sample lessons form a conceptual journey through curriculum-relevant topics, told in a highly interactive way that engages the pupils. The lessons are spiced up with little activities and micro-experiments that are easy to set up and perform also by teachers. These sample lessons are made freely available for download from our figshare site. They include PowerPoint files accompanied by support materials, such as teacher notes, lesson plans, risk assessments, activity and homework sheets. Importantly, these resources are not static but regularly updated and improved, based on new ideas that arose during our school visits or other forms of feedback we receive. Notably, all contents are also provided as dedicated pages on our “droso4schools” website, which can be used for teacher preparation as well as revision or homework tasks of pupils.
So far, most of our experiences are derived from collaborations with secondary schools (Prokop, 2018c), whereas primary schools are new territory for our project. But our first school visits and evaluations were promising, and we felt it to be timely to share our resources – also hoping that members of the teaching community may send us their feedback, advice and suggestions so that we can further improve our lessons.
A KS2 lesson on life cycle
Box 2 Flow of the life cycle lesson
(0) two weeks ahead of the lesson, get vials with fruit fly eggs (to obtain them, please contact us) so that pupils can observe them and protocol their findings on a daily basis;
Fig. 3 An animated image showing the life cycle of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as it can be used and viewed in classrooms. For details see our website.
(1) show the three subclasses of amphibians (letting the pupils guess what they are and providing some background information), and discuss their life cycles;
(2) look at incomplete metamorphosis of dragon- and damselflies (Odonata) and compare their life cycles to those of amphibians with tadpoles;
(4) discuss grasshoppers/crickets (to demonstrate an example of less severe metamorphosis);
(5) use butterfly/moth life cycles to introduce to complete metamorphosis and pupal stages;
(6) engage in an activity where the pupils identify different insect orders and try to guess whether they have a pupal stage (accompanied by an activity sheet);
(7) discuss the pupils’ own protocols of the fly life cycle (see Fig.10 below); show an image of a Drosophila maggot versus adult fly and ask pupils to compare them;
(8) explain how metamorphosis works using examples from Drosophila (supported by films and graphics): newly developing legs and wings as well as transforming muscles;
(9) show a film with mosquito larvae and let pupils guess what they are, then discuss their life cycle;
(10) lead over to mosquito-borne parasites and discuss the life cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium and how it causes malaria (mention the importance of prophylaxis if travelling into malaria-infested regions);
(11) show images of worm parasites, then discuss the life cycle of the dog tapeworms (vividly illustrating why pupils should wash their hands!);
(12) a potential further activity or homework task introduces pupils to the identification of insect orders using determination keys (we use the UC Berkely BioKeys website).
The flow of our life cycle lesson is summarised in Box 2, and contents are explained in the wider conceptual context on our accompanying webpage (Prokop, 2018a; see Appendix). Here I briefly discuss some innovative features of this lesson.
First, when analysing existing online life cycle resources, I mostly encountered materials with lovely drawings but very few would show the real animals. I therefore took a different approach in that my lessons make prominent use of animal photos. In the life cycle lesson these cover the four known groups of amphibians as well as most orders of insects. Many of these animals are set into context, and engaging background information is provided. We even explain how teachers can extend into an activity where children learn simple and exciting ways to use a determination key to identify animals they might find outside in their daily lives. In sum, these contents and activities clearly address items 1-4 in Box 1, whilst bringing natural history into the classroom.
Fig.4Damselflies (left) and dragonflies (right) belong to the insect order of Odonata and are easily distinguished by their eye sizes (insets), wing shapes (see details) and wing postures in resting position (see main images). Image information: Ischnura heterosticta (inset – same species); Sympetrum flaveolum (inset – species unknown).
Second, the use of Drosophila brings new opportunities. For example, observing the full life cycle of flies in only 10 days in the classroom is a memorable way to experience complete metamorphosis. It can even be used for experiments. For example, when comparing fly vials placed closer to a radiator with those further away, the influence of temperature on biological processes of cold-blooded animals (including insects and amphibians) can be demonstrated. Or mutant flies of different body or eye colour can be used, thus challenging the children to spot small differences (if you need suitable flies, please contact us).
Furthermore, fly maggots are drastically different from adult flies (Fig. 5) and do not even have stumpy legs like caterpillars. This poses the obvious question of what actually happens within the pupal case. In flies this question has been answered in unprecedented detail. Building on this knowledge and supported by graphic illustrations and little films, we show how muscles of crawling maggots are rebuilt to enable walking and flying, and how legs and wings are formed anew. Notably, pupils also learn that tongue development in frogs occurs during metamorphosis in ways comparable to leg/wing development in flies.
We were surprised to find that only a few kids could identify mosquito larvae (a common and easy to spot guest in puddles and buckets in our gardens!), but many knew malaria as a mosquito-borne disease. Accordingly, pupils appreciated the life cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium, which starts in humans and then continues in mosquitoes. For this, I provide a step-wise animation which makes it easy to explain the enormously complex Plasmodium life cycle. The lesson leads over to parasitic worms and the example of the tapeworm life cycle is briefly discussed (Fig. 6), which tends to have a gripping “horrible history”-like effect on the pupils. Importantly, the life cycles of both parasites represent relevant examples relating to disease: Plasmodium illustrates the importance of malaria prophylaxis (for kids travelling into malaria-infested areas) and the tapeworm clearly illustrates why we should wash our hands after being outside.
Fig. 6. The dog tapeworm: an unusual but didactically valuable example of life cycle, relevant for understanding needs of daily hygiene. For details see our website.
A KS2 lesson on evolution
Box 3 Flow of the evolution lesson
(1) discuss some aspects of fruit flies including gender differences, and the Antennapedia mutation where flies have 8 legs;
(3) show their scientific names to lead over to discussing the concept of “binominal nomenclature” (two-name naming system, such as in “Tyrannosaurus rex”);
(4) lead over to Darwin and ideas of speciation and evolution;
(5) discuss mutation as the key driver of change, and use albinism and the peppered moth as examples to explain natural selection;
(6) identify Drosophila marker mutations under the microscope (Fig.7) or as a digital exercise (for advice on affordable microscopes or the digital version, please contact us);
(7) together with the pupils, construct an invented evolutionary tree based on Drosophila mutations (Fig.8);
(8) lead over to the human evolutionary tree to introduce the “common ancestor” concept;
(9) point out that the common ancestor of humans and flies lived 500 million years ago, and explain commonalities between fly and human body functions to illustrate that fundamental principles of biology are ancient and have been maintained (concept of ‘deep homology’);
(10) show examples of evolutionary conservation between flies and mammals (Fig.9) including movies of fighting (aggression!) and “free-climbing” (motivation!) flies;
(11) pose the question of whether we can study ageing in a fly that only lives for 7-8 weeks; test this with an experiment racing young against old flies; data are plotted and then discussed in front of the class to show how data can be generated and interpreted.
The flow of our evolution lesson is summarised in Box 3, and most contents are explained on our accompanying webpage (Prokop, 2018a). One innovative aspect is the introduction of “binominal nomenclature“, i.e. the two-name naming system of animals, plants and microbes (such as in “Tyrannosaurus rex”). Its underlying concepts are explained with engaging and surprising examples (e.g. the “pomato“). The lesson uses binominal nomenclature as a gateway to an understanding of animal classification (covering items 4 and 5 in Box 1).
Fig. 7. A simple activity identifying fly mutations under the microscope (also available as a digital exercise)
Using fruit flies offers unique and unusual opportunities for evolution lessons. For example, we use so-called “marker mutations” affecting the flies’ body colours, eye shapes & colours, wing shapes, or bristle shapes & numbers. These changes to the flies’ anatomy are easily spotted by young kids under the microscope (Fig.7; for info about cheap microscopes, please contact us, or if you prefer to perform the experiment with digital images). We then capitalise on these mutations by constructing step-by-step an invented evolutionary tree (Fig.8). This is intended to bring home to the pupils how random mutations can provide opportunities and be selected for, leading to new species over time.
Fig. 8. Using “marker mutations” of Drosophila to construct an invented evolutionary tree
The fact that fly research has helped us understand human disease (Fig. 9), is a fantastic starting point to think about the concept of “deep homology”. The idea behind this concept is that flies and humans shared a common ancestor organism about 500 million years ago. This ancestor had many aspects of biology readily established, which were so fundamental that they have been maintained in the many life forms that evolved from it.
We capitalise on the concept of deep homology by finishing up with a simple, yet highly memorable experiment. Pupils are asked whether they would win a race against their grandparents, to then discuss what happens to our bodies during ageing (item 5 in Box 1). Pupils then vote as to whether they think that a fly life of 7-8 weeks is long enough to show symptoms of ageing – i.e. whether we can study ageing in flies. We take this to the test in that pupils perform a race experiment: flies have the tendency to walk upwards in their vials; so pupils bang them down and measure the time at which the first young and the first old fly arrive at the top (referred to as the “climbing assay”). Data are collected across the class and plotted live in front of their eyes. Pupils quickly see that young flies are faster, thus discovering the answer to the question of this experiment. We discuss the obtained “data clouds” as being typical of biological experiments; pupils are then usually able to suggest that means/averages are a way to describe these data and turn them into bar graphs.
Epilogue: How well do these lessons and their objectives work in practice?
For several years, we have taught various parts of these lessons in higher classes of primary schools and lower classes of secondary schools. On 17 October 2018 we were invited by St. John’s RC Primary School in Manchester to teach both lessons in parallel in two consecutive sessions: first to two year 5 classes (aged 9-10), then to two year 6 classes (aged 10-11). A team of four took on the task (Fig. 10), for which we brought 25 low-cost stereomicroscopes (for looking at mutants), flies and empty vials (for the climbing assay), as well as the various activity and evaluation sheets. Ahead of the event, teachers had watched our 5 minute educational movie together with the pupils, to introduce them to Drosophila as a laboratory model, and had observed vials with fly eggs for two weeks to protocol the fly life cycle (Fig. 10).
Fig. 10 Left: The team visiting St. John’s RC Primary: Andreas Prokop, Sanjai Patel, Megan Chastney, Ben Chapman. Right: Class display illustrating engagement with the fly vials provided 2 weeks ahead of the event.
The flow of lessons during this first comprehensive trial worked in a highly interactive manner, with pupils staying alert. The evaluation forms were filled in with the help of teachers on the following day and turned out to be very encouraging (Fig. 11; Box 4). Most pupils seem to have enjoyed the event and felt they had learned new facts about animals, life cycle and evolution – suggesting that our ideas are in principle working and can reach year 5 and year 6 pupils. This said, the level and amount of selected contents was intended to be demanding, and proper implementation for routine use in schools would require suitable differentiation strategies to reach children of varying abilities. Furthermore, the evaluation only reflects what the pupils felt; it would require more detailed studies to assess whether this correlates with true learning, and follow-ups would be needed to investigate long-term retention.
Fig. 11 Evaluation of the event on 17 Oct 2018 teaching the Life Cycle and Evolution lessons to Y5 and Y6 classes at St. John’s RC Primary School in Manchester. The complete spread sheet can be downloaded here.
To facilitate retention, we designed further strategies and resources. Thus, children were given three activity sheets (LINK1, LINK2) designed to be filled in with the teachers in school or as a homework task (potentially engaging further family members!): (1) an aide-mémoire which was filled in during the lesson and displays different insect orders and whether they have a pupal stage; (2) a sheet explaining the UC Berkeley BioKeys activity; (3) a crossword puzzle as an incentive to look at the accompanying website (Prokop, 2018a) and our 2nd educational movie. However, to achieve that these resources serve their intended purpose of consolidating knowledge, we are aware that schools are busy and that we need to develop clever strategies of incentivisation and closely collaborate with teachers to make sure that these resources are being capitalised on.
Finally, regarding the aims of our droso4school initiative, most pupils found that flies and the fly experiments were great fun and exciting (Fig. 11, Box 4), suggesting that flies seem to work as suitable teaching tools also in primary schools. For the majority of pupils it was new that fruit flies were used in research, and disagreeing students might have known from hearing about our previous events at the same school. But from their comments we take the careful hope that many of these kids will remember Drosophila in the future, and that the experiences of this extracurricular day will make them respond with greater attention and curiosity when hearing about fruit fly research from the media or elsewhere.
To extend this outcome beyond Manchester, we made all our teaching resources public and are working hard to spread their active use within teacher and researcher communities; comments that we received on other lesson resources from across the world show that this is in principle possible (see our impact document). However, the impact could be even greater if examination and education boards incorporated Drosophila into the national curriculum – and this is what we are aiming to achieve (see also Prokop, 2018c)!
Box 4. Some pupils’ comments
It was one of my best days ever (Y5)
The lesson was amazing, most of it I didn’t even know about (Y6)
This lesson was very cool and interesting. I might even go to Manchester University (Y6)
I could understand everything. I loved the experiments the best (Y6)
The lesson was very fun and I hope we have more amazing experiences like that again (Y6)
The lesson was exciting because of the fruit flies (Y5)
I really enjoyed looking at fruit flies through a microscope (Y5)
I think we should do more work on fruit flies, it’s very interesting (Y5)
Using fruit flies made the lesson so much more fun and interesting (Y5)
Using the fruit flies made the lessons exciting. It was amazing. It made me have a better understanding about them and the stages they go through (Y6)
I understand much better how evolution works (Y5)
I didn’t know a lot about evolution but now I do (Y6)
I know much more about evolution and our distant relatives (Y5)
At first I didn’t know about how evolution works but now I do (Y6)
Evolution can help animals adapt to new habitats or to help them to have new advantages and have new abilities (Y6)
I loved learning about different creatures and different insects (Y5)
Lots of interesting facts about many different animals I didn’t even know existed (Y5)
About the author: Andreas Prokop is Professor of Neurobiology at The University of Manchester. As academic head of the ‘Manchester Fly Facility’ and together with the facility’s manager Sanjai Patel, he drives the “Manchester Fly Facility” and ‘droso4schools‘ initiatives mentioned in this blog post.
References
Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B., Wong, B. (2012). Science Aspirations, Capital, and Family Habitus:How Families Shape Children’s Engagement and Identification With Science. American Educational Research Journal49, 881-908 — [LINK]
Croll, P. (2008). Occupational choice, socio‐economic status and educational attainment: a study of the occupational choices and destinations of young people in the British Household Panel Survey. Research Papers in Education23, 243-268 — [LINK]
Harbottle, J., Strangward, P., Alnuamaani, C., Lawes, S., Patel, S., Prokop, A. (2016). Making research fly in schools: Drosophila as a powerful modern tool for teaching Biology. School Science Review97, 19-23 — [LINK]
Maltese, A. V., Tai, R. H. (2011). Pipeline persistence: Examining the association of educational experiences with earned degrees in STEM among U.S. students. Science Education95, 877-907 — [LINK]
Manchester Fly Facility (2015). droso4schools: Online resources for school lessons using the fuit fly Drosophila — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2016). Fruit flies in biological research. Biological Sciences Review28, 10-14 — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2018a). LESSON 6 – Life cycles. Blog post in “droso4schools” — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2018b). Why funding fruit fly research is important for the biomedical sciences. Open Access Govern20, 198-201 — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2018c). How to communicate basic research in schools – a case study using Drosophila. Blog post in “PLOS | BLOGS” — [LINK]
Appendix 1
Information on the accompanying website covers all of the contents of the life cycle lesson and most of the evolution lesson. Some information goes beyond these contents to provide a wider context; it comprises the following topics:
What role do sexual versus asexual modes of reproduction play in plants and animals. The horticultural practice of grafting is also explained in this context.
How do different plant or animal species distribute gender? For example, hermaphroditic snails or earthworms in our garden are male and female at the same time, or clown fish can change gender from male to female.
How does the reproduction of plants and animals compare to that of bacteria or baker’s yeast?
How do life cycles link to evolution? In this context, the example of the peppered moth is explained and the relevant topic of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is explained.
What is development and how does it relate to the topic of reproduction and life cycle?
The information about these five insect orders also covers typical features of their aquatic larvae typically occurring in our ponds or rivers (Fig. 5). This might be helpful for an outside activity.
Fig. A1 Embryonic and juvenile development. For further details see our website.
This blog was originally published on 25 Oct 2017 on the NCCPE website [LINK}.
The challenge we set ourselves
There are many excellent initiatives to improve biomedical communication, but surprisingly few have been publicised in biology or science communication journals, meaning that many examples of excellent work and important experiences are not shared to inspire and help others. To overcome this, I recently collaborated with Sam Illingworth (Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University) to edit a special issue for Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology about science communication in the field of fundamental biomedical science. In that issue, we experimented with descriptive, less analytical article styles, as have also been developed in parallel by the new journal Research for All. Whilst providing potential templates for other journals, we hope that such articles help to bridge the current gap between biologists and academic science communicators. With this in mind, two articles of the issue are written by science communicators, explaining basic concepts and strategies in simple terms, alerting to the urgent need that articles in the field of science communication are made understandable to non-specialist readers.
What is fundamental biomedical research and why should we communicate it?
Fundamental biomedical research concerns biological processes or phenomena, usually with a view to future medical applications. Since direct research in humans is restricted in its possibilities, biomedical research is typically performed in animal models including yeast, worms, fruit flies, frogs, zebrafish, chicks, or rodents. This research capitalises on the “deep homology” concept which states that many fundamental genes and their biological functions have been preserved across species, to a degree that even yeast genes can be replaced with human ones. Medical application of such research is obvious when addressing cancer, stem cells or neurodegeneration, but not for fundamental studies that investigate, for example, how certain organs develop in flies. Such research is often falsely seen to be solely of academic interest, where in fact it is an essential breeding ground for new understanding of gene functions or biological processes that can explain human disease and provide new paths to medical applications. To sustain this pipeline and rectify current political trends (which over-emphasise clinical investigation as a promising short-term revenue-generator), the importance of fundamental research must be well communicated to different audiences, including the general public, clinicians, and policymakers.
For almost every organ in humans there is a match in flies, and common genes regulate their development, organisation and function.
Challenges and opportunities
Communicating cancer, stem cell or neurodegeneration research will naturally appeal to audiences, but work on the cytoskeleton, Notch signalling or circadian rhythm presents a communication challenge. The terms are hard to understand and the benefits to society harder to envisage. Therefore, intelligent framing is required, with a development of narratives that make complex topics easy to understand. This will have a positive impact also on science education, since many aspects of fundamental biomedical research directly concern the biology school curriculum. These are important opportunities, but the development of the required communication strategies is usually left to scientists in their spare time, with little or no funding, and guided by common sense rather than science communication experts.
Developing objective-driven long-term strategies
We were therefore motivated to produce our recent special issue, where we argue that significant improvements in science communication can be achieved with objective-driven initiatives based on long-term strategies, including an effective online presence and the development and sharing of high-quality resources. For example, two recent articles in the New York Times and Observer about the Nobel Prize awarded for discoveries in fruit flies, gained in quality through information taken from advocacy websites which were developed by an objective-driven long-term initiative promoting fruit fly research. Our special issue provides further examples of such initiatives, each setting very different objectives: engaging African scientists, communicating stem cells responsibly, establishing collaborations of scientists with teachers or with clinicians, and many more examples as listed in the editorial. Two further articles explain how learned societies or dedicated social platforms can further increase the impact of such initiatives and help to establish national or international networks in which the workload can be shared for the benefit of all.
Embracing publication and interdisciplinary collaboration
We have learned that much can be gained from interdisciplinary collaborations; biologists can learn from communicators, while communicators can include a wider range of resources in their studies, and collaborate with existing biomedical initiatives to test new ideas and strategies in practice – all with a view to achieving the worthwhile goal of making fundamental science a more vibrant part of our society!
The Manchester Fly Facility maintains an objective-driven, long-term science communication initiative which started in 2011 and promotes the importance of fundamental biomedical research involving the fruit fly Drosophila. As part of this initiative, a team of 7 researchers undertook a very successful school visit reaching out to 8 schools and 160 students. Here I take this occasion to describe the logistics behind such an event, but also look back in time, to illustrate the step-wise developments that have led to the conceptual framework underpinning this visit. With this blog, we hope to provide some helpful ideas for readers who take an interest in science communication and education.
Note, that this blog was originally published as a post on PLOS | BLOGS. It will be used by Scarisbrick Hall School as evidence to the Department of Education and independent schools association, to show an effective school-university partnership.
What is the Manchester Fly Facility and its science communication initiative?
The Manchester Fly Facility was set up in 2010 as a faculty hub for Drosophila research, providing infrastructure for fly husbandry and work, acting as a repository for fly research-specific tools and techniques, and to provide training in fly genetics for which we developed a popular teaching package (Roote & Prokop, 2013; Prokop, 2013).In July 2011, we decided to take the opportunity of a Community Open Day at our faculty to showcase flies and fly research to the public. The day was a success with visitors and helped improve communication within the Manchester fly community. Most importantly, it set a development in motion that would grow into the internationally most prominent initiative for the communication, advocacy and teaching of Drosophila. As is detailed in our recent publication (Patel & Prokop, 2017), our initiative grew step-wise and is now multi-pronged, based on 6 different areas of engagement: university training, participation in science fairs, development of science exhibitions, development of educational videos/materials, school engagement, and the marketing of resources to teachers and members of the fly community. We have produced 8 journal publications, 11 online resources, 4 websites, and ~10 blog posts; a growing collection of over 40 pages of comments from across the world reflects the impact our initiative is having (LINK).
Fig. 1. Identifying marker mutations (A) is a simple activity liked by kids and grown-ups alike and can be used in different contexts: B) science fairs, C) school visits, D) school open days at our facility. Modified from Patel & Prokop, 2017.
Driving 6 parallel strands of engagement certainly involves a lot of effort, but it also offers great opportunities for constant quality improvement, in that new ideas in one engagement area often cross-fertilise other activities (Fig. 1). This trend is facilitated by having one overarching objective: to promote the awareness and acknowledgement of Drosophila research as an essential pillar in the discovery process of the biomedical sciences. These objectives closely link to a parallel advocacy campaign promoted by the BSDB and The Company of Biologists raising awareness of Developmental Biology as a basic science discipline of enormous importance and impact (Maartens et al., 2018; Prokop, 2018). Such links between initiatives are in line with a model of communication in which researchers, societies and organisations combine their various efforts into wider collaborative science communication networks with one common goal: to drive advocacy for basic science with far greater rigour and impact than could possibly be achieved in isolation (Prokop, 2017; Illingworth & Prokop, 2017). We therefore actively seek such links with societies or other well-established initiatives, such as DrosAfrica (Martín-Bermudo et al., 2017; LINK), TReND in Africa (LINK) or NC3Rs (LINK).
School engagement – a steep learning curve!
Of our 6 engagement areas, the work with schools has a specific objective setting: to bring Drosophila back into biology lessons – ideally as part of the UK’s school curriculum. As described elsewhere (Patel & Prokop, 2017), we work towards this goal by engaging with schools in different forms: (a) visiting schools for extracurricular days or science clubs, (b) inviting school classes into our laboratories, (c) organising or presenting on teacher seminars, and (d) developing sample lessons for teachers. We started our first school engagement in November 2012 and have organised and/or participated in over 65 school visits and 15 CPD events since (LINK). During this period, major developments have taken place (for details see Box 1): we learned how to organise ourselves better and started to combine lesson contents with the school curriculum and to emphasise their relevance. We also recognised the power of providing supporting online materials, sharing our teaching resources and establishing true researcher-teacher collaboration and active school involvement (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. The website banner of our droso4schools initiative, set up to collaborate with schools and generate curriculum-relevant resources for teachers.
Box 1: Strategic improvement of school engagement – some lessons learned1) We quickly learned that we had to be well-prepared and -organised to be self-sufficient on school grounds, able to adapt flexibly to whatever conditions we are faced with (Patel & Prokop, 2017; see also main text).
2) We recognised that students show greater interest if we inspire them about science with topics that are part of their curriculum, i.e. help them to better understand examination-relevant aspects of biology (see comments in our evaluation document). In this way, we talk less about flies but rather engage with them, using Drosophila as an effective teaching tool rather than main subject of the event.
3) We realised that the qualities of Drosophila as a teaching tool are unique: it is the organism with the conceptually best understood biology and research strengths in many curriculum-relevant areas, providing many opportunities to carry out micro-experiments in classrooms or extended experiments in dedicated laboratory workshops. In addition, it is cheap and easy to keep in schools, ideal to bring real animals back into biology lessons (for more detail see Prokop, 2015).
4) Contents presented with flies should ideally be linked back to relevant applications in areas of disease-related research or the understanding of homologous phenomena in higher animals or humans; in this way, the translational power of fly research comes naturally to students and likely leaves a more lasting impact.
5) We realised the power of developing parallel online resources, so that students can re-live or even revise learned contents, or prepare for our visits, for example by studying the “Why fly?” page (LINK).
6) School outreach tends to restrict to local schools and limited numbers of pupils, making it difficult to justify the time invested and sustain the initiative. Real opportunities to extend the reach to national or international levels arise from making school resources accessible online. We therefore used the free and citable online platform figshare.com to openly share our PowerPoints and adjunct support materials which usually include logistics documents, experimental instructions, risk assessments, activity sheets and films (Prokop & Patel, 2016).
7) An alternative strategy to spread the use of Drosophila as a teaching tool is to get teachers interested in using some of our ideas or resources in their own teaching lessons. Implementing this strategy requires a deeper understanding of school realities, including the time constrains and interests of teachers, the imperative nature of the curriculum and the typical modalities of school teaching. To bridge this fundamental knowledge gap, we founded the droso4schools initiative (Patel et al., 2017; Harbottle et al., 2015). In a nutshell, we sent placement students for several months as teaching assistants into partner schools to establish true collaborations with teachers and shape the content and style of our presentations and adjunct materials, to make them school-compatible. In parallel, we developed the droso4schools website on which we explain the taught contents in simple terms, as a helpful resource for lesson preparation, revision or homework tasks (LINK). Furthermore, we launched a further online repository where teachers can download our lesson resources for free (Prokop & Patel, 2015).
Although we have come a long way, the final objective of establishing Drosophila as a teaching tool in the UK’s school curriculum is still to be achieved, and additional efforts employing different strategies are required and underway. But we can now build on a sound foundation: we clearly showcase how flies can be used in curricular biology lessons and can provide evidence for their success with teachers and students alike (LINK). As a further positive outcome, many comments we receive demonstrate that our resources are in worldwide use, as is nicely illustrated by the initiative taken by Ana Fernández-Miñán (CABD, Sevilla) who translated some of our lessons into Spanish (free for download;Prokop & Patel, 2015). Furthermore, our collaboration with Firzan Nainu in the context of the “Fly Indonesia” initiative has led to the translation of some of our droso4school web resources into Indonesian (more are underway; LINK), and we have just started a collaboration with the PhD student Rashidatu Abdulazeez (Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria) and Marta Vicente-Crespo (St. Augustine International Univ., Uganda) at DrosAfrica, aiming to establish an impactful school outreach project in Nigeria.
A recent example: a visit to Scarisbrick Hall School
It would be wrong to assume that once international impact has been achieved, the local school engagement can be side-lined. Local schools remain extremely valuable partners, allowing us to stay in contact and collaborate with teachers to ensure mutuality of our engagement; and the visit of schools provides unique opportunities to try out new or improved strategies or resources, to gather additional evidence, and to spread the word within the teacher community. But they need careful planning to ensure success. As an example, I briefly describe here the planning behind a school visit that took place on the 4th of July 2018 at Scarisbrick Hall School near Wigan in Lancashire.
Fig. 3. Scenes from the CPD event in January 2018 (see also Blackburn, 2018).
The visit was initiated through our Faculty’s links to Scarisbrick Hall, and it was mutually agreed that these links would be extended to a network of schools in the area (kindly woven by Claire Winstanley, head of the school’s science department), so that we would increase the reach and impact of our collaboration. As starting point, a number of teachers from those schools attended a day-long CPD event we organised in January 2018, which introduced to the philosophy behind the droso4schools initiative, our various teaching resources, and the available infrastructure and support we provide (Fig. 3;Blackburn, 2018). On this basis, it was agreed to have a large student intake at GCSE/A-level (ages 14-17) and cover a range of topics: 160 students from 8 schools would rotate through four parallel 25 minute-long classes on the topics of (A) nervous system, (B) ageing/neurodegeneration/statistics, (C) evolution/genetics and (D) enzymes (available at Prokop & Patel, 2016); 80 students would participate in a morning and 80 in an afternoon session, and the schools would take care of the logistically challenging transport of students between schools.
Fig. 4. Our team before and after the event. In the left image from left to right: Chiara Francavilla, Andreas Prokop, Eemaan Memon, Megan Chastney, Sanjai Patel, Ryan West, Joanne Sharpe.
In preparation of the event, we asked the Manchester research community for volunteers and got together a team of 10. To optimise our lessons and test new ideas gathered from other events during the last months, I thoroughly revised our various teaching resources and updated them accordingly (available atProkop & Patel, 2016). Sanjai Patel (manager of the Manchester Fly Facility) arranged the bus travel and organised the required fly stocks, materials and equipment, with strong support by Carol Fan (one of the team members) and capitalising on our continuously updated logistics document (available atProkop & Patel, 2016).A week ahead of our visit, the whole team came together for a two hour preparation session in which we went through each lesson in great detail, discussing contents, styles of presentation and practical details of the in-built activities. The day before the event, each sub-team packed the required materials for their own classes to ensure independent and frictionless setting-up at the school site.
Fig. 5. Setting up (left) and teaching (right) of the climbing assay lesson: old flies are tested in their climbing performance against young flies (inset on the right) to then perform statistics on the obtained data and discuss ageing/neurodegeneration research in Drosophila (for details see our webpage).
These careful preparations gave us the flexibility to deal with some unexpected problems. For example, during the last two days before the event, three members had to cancel reducing our team to 7 (Fig. 4); sub-teams needed to be re-arranged on short notice, which was enormously facilitated by the joined preparation session from a few days before. On the day, our bus came an hour late, greatly impacting on our tight schedule. Over the phone, we swiftly agreed with the school to skip one of the four rotations in the morning session, so that students would miss out on one class in a staggered fashion, still able to discuss contents with classmates from parallel groups. The delayed arrival time also significantly reduced our time for setting-up (Fig.5), but it came in handy that everybody had packed their own boxes and that teachers had been assigned to support us. In this context, I would like to thank Scarisbrick Hall School for outstanding support and hospitality, for which we are most grateful and which made the day even more enjoyable!
Fig. 6. Our classes are highly interactive and all contain micro-experiments. Examples shown are: A) using opto-genetics to induce epilepsy-like seizures [LINK]; B) identifying genetic marker mutations [LINK]; C) performing dissections of maggots and colour reactions to demonstrate enzymatic activity [LINK]; D) performing the climbing assay followed by data analysis and statistics [LINK]. Experimental instructions available at Prokop & Patel (2016).
The teaching of classes strictly followed the planned procedures (Fig. 6), leaving little time to rest during the two sessions, with only one break of half an hour in-between. But, thanks to the good preparation, outstanding school support and dedication of the entire team, it worked frictionless. This said, there always are some unexpected technical problems: flies failed to display the expected attraction to our UV lamp in a phototaxis experiment and, due to unusually hot weather, the temperature-sensitive shibire flies were severely immobile in the afternoon neuro session. To avoid these problems on future events, solutions were discussed and noted down in the logistics document during our debriefing session.
In sum, the efforts paid off: all classes were a great success, much praised by students and teachers alike, as clearly documented by comments and statistics in the detailed evaluation document (Fig. 7). Whilst these data speak for themselves, I would like to briefly highlight that our visit appears to have turned round the majority of students from knowing nothing about flies to supporting their use in research but also as suitable teaching tools; especially the broad opportunities to perform meaningful and helpful in-class experiments were pointed out repeatedly. The few who were opposed did not necessarily dislike the event, but had ethical reservations about experimentation with living organisms – an ongoing debate that requires wider discussion in society, as highlighted also by a recent BBC program about this topic (LINK).
The fact that Scarisbrick Hall School offered to act as a regional hub, made it possible to reach out to large numbers of students and schools in one single day – which hopefully had an impact and helped us to form further school alliances around Manchester!
Fig. 7. Evaluation of the Scarisbrick Hall School event. For further details see our evaluation document.
Why bother?
Some readers might question this kind of engagement and wonder why anybody would sacrifice valuable time for something that seems merely altruistic. First of all, I would argue that in the current political climate where fundamental biomedical research is in dire straits (e.g. Jones & Wilsdon, 2018), we all should be prepared to communicate the importance of our research; small contributions by many can build up to the societal impact we need (Prokop, 2017; Illingworth & Prokop, 2017; LINK). Secondly, for those who take a greater interest and work in an institution that is supportive, public engagement offers important opportunities. These opportunities range from being recognised and promoted for achievements, to making experiences in science communication or education that take you in interesting alternative professional career directions. Thirdly, serious public communication of our research usually influences the way we do it and how we sell it in publications and grant applications. To put it bluntly: “If you cannot explain your science and its importance [to a member of the public], you either have not thought hard enough and need to refine your explanations, or you are doing the wrong thing and should consider changes in your research direction!” (Prokop, 2017).
References
Blackburn, C. (2018). A droso4school CPD event for teachers. Blog post in “The Node” — [LINK]
Illingworth, S., Prokop, A. (2017). Science communication in the field of fundamental biomedical research (editorial). Sem Cell Dev Biol70, 1-9 — [LINK] [LINK2]
Jones, R., Wilsdon, J. (2018). It’s time to burst the biomedical bubble in UK research. The Guardian online — [LINK]
Maartens, A., Prokop, A., Brown, K., Pourquié, O. (2018). Advocating developmental biology. Development145 — [LINK]
Martín-Bermudo, M. D., Gebel, L., Palacios, I. M. (2017). DrosAfrica: Establishing a Drosophila community in Africa. Sem Cell Dev Biol70, 58-64 — [LINK]
Patel, S., DeMaine, S., Heafield, J., Bianchi, L., Prokop, A. (2017). The droso4schools project: long-term scientist-teacher collaborations to promote science communication and education in schools. Semin Cell Dev Biol70, 73-84 — [LINK]
Patel, S., Prokop, A. (2017). The Manchester Fly Facility: Implementing an objective-driven long-term science communication initiative. Semin Cell Dev Biol70, 38-48 — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2013). A rough guide to Drosophila mating schemes. figshare, dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.106631 — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2015). Bringing life into biology lessons: using the fruit fly Drosophila as a powerful modern teaching tool — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2017). Communicating basic science: what goes wrong, why we must do it, and how we can do it better. Blog post in “PLOS | BLOGS” — [LINK]
Prokop, A. (2018). What is Developmental Biology – and why is it important? Open Access Govern17, 121-123 — [LINK] [LINK2]
Prokop, A., Patel, S. (2015). Biology lessons for schools using the fruit fly Drosophila. figshare, dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1352064 — [LINK]
Prokop, A., Patel, S. (2016). Resources for communicating Drosophila research in schools and on science fairs. figshare, 10.6084/m9.figshare.4262921 — [LINK]
Roote, J., Prokop, A. (2013). How to design a genetic mating scheme: a basic training package for Drosophila genetics. G3 (Bethesda)3, 353-8 — [LINK]
Developmental Biology addresses questions of societal importance
The life science discipline Developmental Biology (DB) aims to understand the processes that lead from the fertilisation of an egg cell (or equivalent) to the formation of a well-structured and functional multicellular organism (Fig.1). At first sight, this may appear a mere curiosity-driven academic goal, not necessarily worth tax payers’ money. Here I argue that the opposite is true: DB is a key discipline in the life sciences, a motor for research into human disease and fertility, food sustainability and biological responses to environmental pollution and global warming.
According to the US’ National Research Council, over half of initial pregnancies are affected by developmental defects, ~3% of live births suffer from major developmental aberrations, ~70% of neonatal deaths and 22% of infant deaths have developmental causes, and ~30% of admissions to paediatric hospitals are due to developmental defects. The causes can be random errors, inherited or acquired gene mutations or toxins – as illustrated by severe limb malformations of thousands of new-borns during the thalidomide/Contergan drug scandal in the 1950s, or the stark increase in birth defects after the Bhopal gas catastrophe in 1984.
These numbers and examples clearly cry out for scientific investigations into the developmental processes affected – not only to understand or even treat human disorders, but also to deliver profound arguments that convince policy makers, for example to reduce toxic wastes, fumes and plastics which pose threats to our healthy genes and development. DB is a scientific discipline at the centre of such investigations, and it has two important strategic strengths, as will be explained in the following.
DB asks profound questions at the level of whole organisms or organs
DB investigates questions such as “how does the kidney or brain develop?” or “how do limbs or leaves achieve their characteristic shapes and positions?” To address such questions, a typical DB research strategy may start by identifying the genes or gene networks regulating the respective developmental processes in a chosen animal or plant. These genes can then be functionally manipulated or eliminated in order to study the resulting developmental aberrations. The findings often allow deductions about how the involved genes and processes function in health; they may also reveal parallels to clinical cases of human developmental disorders, thus directing informed biomedical research into such conditions.
To investigate processes from the genetic level all the way up to the organism/organ level, DB has to be highly inclusive and interdisciplinary, making active use not only of genetics, but also biophysics, biochemistry, cell biology, physiology and anatomy. In this way, it drives discoveries at the various levels of complexity, acts as an umbrella discipline that can provide a common focus towards essential biological questions, and builds bridges to clinicians or plant/animal breeders who tend to think at the organism/organ level.
DB makes strategic uses of model organisms
Most DB research does not use human embryos, but covers the breadth of the animal and plant kingdoms. This ambition might seem to bear the risk of over-stretching our research capacities, but it is in fact a great strength of DB and gold mine for discovery. It turned out that many genes and functional gene networks that steer fundamental biological processes have ancient evolutionary origins and are still being used by very different species for similar purposes (Fig. 2); ~75% of human disease genes have a counterpart in fruit flies, and ~50% of yeast genes can be functionally replaced with human genes. Capitalising on this principle of ‘deep homology’, highly efficient and cost-effective, hence economically responsible research can be done in smaller organisms, such as worms, flies or even yeast. The genes and concepts learned can then be tested in mammals (most frequently mice) and eventually used for clinical trials. This discovery pipeline has led to significant understanding of human biology and disease, as evidenced by an impressive number of Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Medicine awarded to scientists working with these “model systems”.
What DB has done for us (so far)
DB research starts with the fertilisation of egg cells; studying the underlying processes has provided the foundations for much of what fertility clinics can do these days. DB investigates how fertilised egg cells divide in regulated manners to grow into full-size bodies, how the cells formed in this process communicate in meaningful ways to become different from each other, migrate, change shape and attach to each other, thus assembling into tissues and complex organs. Many of these processes are needed again during wound repair, and DB research helps to speed up wound healing, prevent scars and overcome chronic wounds. Also ‘tissue engineering’, which aims to grow replacement tissues in a plastic dish, is essentially guided by DB research. In cancer, cells lose their identity, divide excessively, detach from their local environments and migrate to form metastases. Much of this understanding that can instruct cures to contain these aberrant cells, comes from DB research. Tissues keep so-called stem cells which can be re-activated in orderly manners to divide and grow replacement tissues. There are high hopes from stem cell research, for example to replace cartilage in arthritis or damaged discs, or brain cells in dementia, much of which is guided by the vast knowledge gained through DB.
The applications of DB go far beyond biomedical research. For example, understanding plant development provides a means to speed up breeding processes, such as optimising root systems, plant size or flowering time, thus contributing to the efforts of achieving sustainable food security in times of over-population. Furthermore understanding environmental influences on development, such astemperature-dependent sex determination in turtles, has enormous importance for conservation biology, especially in times of increasing pollution and global warming.
In conclusion, DB may appear as a mere academic discipline, but its value for society is enormous. This should make us think about a carefully balanced system of science funding. Current trends seem to favour clinical or industrial research performed to translate biological knowledge into economic or societal benefit. But we must not overlook that fundamental research, such as in the field of DB, lays the long-term foundations for such developments.
This blog post was first published as a journal article: Prokop, A. (2018). What is Developmental Biology – and why is it important? Open Access Govern 17, 121-123 — [LINK]. I would like to thank Ottoline Leyser and Aidan Maartens for helpful comments on this manuscript.
This blog about a plenary talk given by Prof. Matthew Cobb (The University of Manchester) at the School of Biological Sciences symposium on Friday, 12 January 2018 was first published on The Node on 19 Jan 2018 [LINK]
Matthew Cobb is an inspiring advocate and communicator of science, in particular of biology. This is clearly reflected in his books and articles about the history of biology (and beyond), and his various radio programmes reflecting on past and contemporary science topics. Recent highlights are his book “Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code” (shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books) as well as his BBC Radio programmes “Editing Life” (a well-balanced analysis of the opportunities and risks of the newly emerging CRISPR gene editing techniques) and ”Sydney Brenner: A Revolutionary Biologist“ (about the life of this outstanding scientist).
As a result of working on two BBC radio programmes and a project on scientific collaboration (supported by a Sydney Brenner Research Scholarship from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Matthew has been reflecting on what are the magic ingredients that produce great biology. The talk he presented at Manchester’s School of Biological Sciences Symposium on 12 January 2018 (see re-recording of this entire talkhere), was an inspiring and enlightening summary of the key ideas extracted from this endeavour.
In his talk, Matthew first gave a definition of “great biology” which he proposes as “influencing our thinking about life, from nucleic acids to ecosystems, in ways that are long-lasting and opening up new perspectives”; he pointed out that these traits are “not necessarily associated with large grant funding, publication in ‘high-ranking’ journals or practical or therapeutic implications”. He then moved on to explain what he thinks the five magic ingredients are that promote great biology, illustrating each point with enlightening examples of scientists and anecdotes from the biology’s past (one of them about amateur scientists!) – always with a view to current practice, and providing inspirational advice for the future. Certainly, I do not want to spoil the watching of Matthew’s talk by giving away the concrete examples, but shall briefly discuss the fundamental ingredients that Matthew highlighted, mixed in with some of my own thoughts.
The first advice is to be early in the game. To be at the forefront of new developments or even being a trend setter requires vision, meaning the ability to recognise today what will be important tomorrow, but also living with the right mind at the right time. Certainly, the chances of being in the early game is helped by keeping an open mind for the bigger picture and unanswered questions, rather than getting lost in detail. And there are measures that can be taken to this end. For example “The encyclopaedia of ignorance – life sciences”, edited by R. Duncan and M. Weston-Smith in 1977/78, was an inspiring attempt to make renowned scientists of the time think aloud about the future of the various life science disciplines; and I could imagine that this was a great catalyser for curious readers to awaken their pioneer spirits. Another important means to foster a culture that honours forward-looking thinking, is to free time for, and take an interest in, true dialogue and discussion. For this, we also need to generate the right environment and opportunities, such as to ensure that all new buildings have informal social spaces where people can meet and discuss. But also, when reviewing manuscripts, we need to be open to new ideas so that they can develop – rather than brush them away with a tunnel view. In a recent case of a fellowship application I experienced, ten lay reviewers gave maximum marks; in contrast, three specialist reviewers rated the application as being mere average, mostly based on technical detail and blind to the concepts and ideas behind that application and its potential to develop great science. It is the latter that we all need to recognise and foster.
The second advice is to think and plan long-term. Key to this strategy is the art of long-term objective setting guided by fundamental questions and their break-down into medium and short-term goals that can be dealt with at a time. Again, this is not made easy in the current science and science funding landscape, but all arguments are in favour of long-term developments. The “skimming-the-cream-and-moving-on” mentality might be good for the careers of individual scientists, but perhaps not so good for the actual science. Similar conclusions are drawn by the article “How should novelty be valued in science?” published by B. A. Cohen in Elife last year. Cohen’s analysis of arguments from the philosophy of science (how reliable knowledge is generated) and from the sociology of science (how science communities work most efficiently) clearly dismantle the excessive demand for novel mechanisms (as opposed to gradual development of concepts) that governs contemporary science funding and publishing policies. This trend has become a significant inhibitor of high quality science, and the alarming increase in reports about non-reproducibility of published results is a logic consequence of these developments, and poses a risk to the future of science.
The third advice is to choose and/or develop the right tools. Apart from the examples Matthew mentioned in his talk, I can mainly speak for the biomedical sciences; my personal experiences lie with Developmental Biology and Drosophila research within, both of which are under threat by the growing emphasis on translational (i.e. clinical) research. Many politicians and funders seem to focus increasingly on the final steps of the discovery pipeline, fixing their gaze on expected short-term returns. They overlook, and often don’t understand, that longer-term basic research (which is typically not performed on humans but on animal model organisms as the more versatile “tools”) generates the creative pool of ideas that will feed the bench-to-bedside pipeline in the future. But even within fundamental research, “tool choice” has shifted away from the use of genetic invertebrate model organisms, such as C. elegans or Drosophila, to the use of mouse models. This development fails to recognise that research concerning evolutionary conserved processes and mechanisms is done far more productively and economically in the smaller model organisms; as Hugo Bellen once stated [LINK]: “You get 10 times more biology for a dollar invested in flies than you get in mice”. I therefore believe that we would see greater biology if grant panels looked more critically at the justifications for the model organisms that are being proposed for projects – and that such a practice would free up funds for a greater variety of science.
The fourth advice is to build good teams. Matthew highlighted three factors. Ideally have at least one person with great vision in your team that has the genius to drive the conceptual ideas behind the work. Be complementary in your expertises. But, most importantly, foster a productive culture of discussion: be prepared to play around with ideas even if they appear mad at first sight; and enjoy and capitalise on friction coming from different opinions and opposing thoughts, so that the best ideas can emerge and be developed into scientific experiments.
The fifth ingredient, least accessible to advice, is luck! We all know this component as a potential maker and breaker of careers. This said, bad luck certainly breaks those who either lack the vision or disregard the above advice. However, the good scientists will be prepared: either by taking the long view that provides flexibility for alternative strategies and approaches, or by using failure as an opportunity to rethink and take new directions – perhaps providing a new chance to be early in the game! As Napoleon supposedly said: “I believe in luck, and the wise man neglects nothing which contributes to his destiny”.
But even if we are eager to follow this advice, the circumstances of the current science landscape might not be in support of great biology. Harmful metrics, counterproductive expectations, bureaucracy, a shift in public opinion, and harmful publishing policies “bully us into bad science” and promote self-focussed communities and mechanisms that inhibit true progress and passion for science. Some examples were given above and many more can be found in other publications (e.g. Lawrence; Cohen; Young; Smaldino; Martínez-Arias; Nerlich). But, as I argued in arecent blog, we must organise ourselves and engage as a community in dialogue with each other, clinicians, policy makers, funders and publishers – all with a view to improving the biology we do. For such dialogue, we need arguments and elevator pitches that are engaging and convincing. To this end, Matthew’s talk is a rich resource of ideas and well thought-out arguments that we all should listen to and take on board.
Science communication (scicomm) has become a buzz term in the current science landscape. I fully support its importance and have been a scicomm “activist” for over 6 years, propagating the importance of fundamental biomedical research and the use of the fruit fly (Drosophila) as an important pillar within (see rationale). I have contributed to many science fairs and school visits, organised the Brain Box fair with over 5K visitors, am the driver of the Manchester Fly Facility, the droso4school and co-initiator of the Fly Indonesia scicomm initiatives, am the chair of the science communication committee of Fly Board and the communication officer of the British Society for Developmental Biology running an advocacy campaign together with The Node (see our editorial), maintain 5 websites, have published numerous blogs, papers and outreach resource repositories [LINK], and edited a recent special journal issue on scicomm in the biomedical sciences. However, I still find it difficult to say whether I have made any long-term impact – have I changed any behaviours? For example, my very well-attended plenary talk at a major fruit fly conference aiming to inspire the community about scicomm, was much applauded, but had no impact on viewer metrics of our key resource sites – not even short term. Similarly, it is easy to get carried away by likes and shares when spinning out ideas and resources across social media, but online metrics then usually reveal that very few have actually opened the links they liked or shared! Notwithstanding, I stay a believer in the major opportunities and the urgent need for scicomm, but also that we need to re-think our approaches, as will be explained in the following.
A need for multi-faceted dialogue
Defining scicomm and its many different facets is not easy. In my interpretation, it means establishing dialogue (in a variety of modalities) between practicing scientists (called “scientists” from now on) and a wide range of target groups to resolve reciprocal misconceptions, learn from one another and achieve mutual benefit.
Direct engagement of scientists with the wider public is usually done at science fairs, school visits, public presentations, etc. Many of these activities tend to be short-lived one-offs that reach a limited amount of people and, at first glance, may appear to be relatively low on ‘impact.’ However, there are opportunities if we open up to dialogue! Genuine engagement with pupils, teachers or visitors at a science fair can be a sobering exercise: the responses you receive make absolutely clear what topics and arguments come across, excite and are perceived as being important – and it is the “thumbs down” responses which should make us think about our own science! To put it bluntly: if you cannot explain your science and its importance, you either have not thought hard enough and need to refine your explanations, or you are doing the wrong thing and should consider changes in your research direction! If we use scicomm in this way, it will help to align our science with the wider society in the long term; this can be taken even a step further through citizenscience and other forms of actively involving the public in our research. Furthermore, it will provide the refined explanations and elevator pitches with which to advocate our science and engage with journalists to achieve improved and helpful press outlets. Even more, they provide profound rationales and simple narratives that will be as powerful when presenting our own science in grant applications, talks and publications.
Important aspects of scicomm lie in the hands of journalists or teachers. Scientists tend to have little influence on article or school lesson contents, although journalists reach audiences in their millions, and students at schools are the potential future scientists and will constitute and shape the future society which we would wish to embrace science. To engage in true dialogue with schools, scientists (and especially those working in basic research) have a deep understanding of topics that lie at the heart of school education. This offers powerful opportunities to carry the spirit of science into schools and the wider society. However, to do this in meaningful ways, we need to listen to and collaborate with teachers and school policymakers to understand and adapt to the realities of school life and the requirements of teachers. In analogous ways, we must establish efficient dialogue with journalists to achieve high quality outcome with a clear view to press outlets that are mutually beneficial, i.e. exciting and entertaining whilst being scientifically sound and balanced.
Finally, we need dialogue within our science communities. Harmful metrics, counterproductive expectations, bureaucracy, a shift in public opinion, and harmful publishing policies “bully us into bad science” by promoting self-focussed communities and mechanisms that inhibit true progress and passion for science (Lawrence; Cohen; Young; Smaldino; Martínez-Arias; Nerlich; Jones & Wilsdon). As part of the current adverse developments, basic biomedical research (which is the life-blood for clinical application in the long term) is being sidelined in favour of applied and clinical research expected to generate revenue or quality-of-life improvements in the nearer future. Unfortunately, those few scientists who climbed the podium of success and obtained positions often feel no need to change what works for them, whilst many are kept too busy trying to stay afloat to find the time for taking action. Also here, dialogue offers opportunities to rectify short-term thinking through intelligent and well-framed dialogue with policy makers, funding organisations, publishers, as well as clinicians to achieve inclusion and collaboration towards higher quality science, rather than harmful competition for funding and recognition. Initiatives such as bulliedintobadscience.org (campaigning for a fairer research environment), a collection of essays (unfortunately behind a paywall) and our online campaign (both advocating developmental biology), or a recent eLife article (using history of science and social science arguments to discredit current policies) are good examples of scicomm within science communities.
Objective-driven long-term initiatives as an opportunity to establish dialogue
The catalogue of urgent communication tasks waiting to be addressed is impressive, to a degree that sticking our heads in the sand and carrying on as usual seems the only feasible response. As Sam Illingworth and I argued in an F1000R paper, isolated activities by scientists are hardly enough to address these scicomm challenges, also considering that we operate in a rather territorial landscape of scicomm where science and funding organisations, politicians and publishers show little tendency to collaborate and develop common objectives and frameworks. We still believe that scientists can achieve positive developments, but this will require long-term thinking, clear objective-setting and the formation of scicomm networks within research communities, where many little contributions to the gradual development of resource, strategy and implementation, can grow in momentum and achieve a lot for the community.
To show that this is feasible and how it can be put in practice, Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology kindly invited us to publish the special issue “Science communication in the field of fundamental biomedical research“, which has generously been given free access status to fulfil its purpose of communication. As is detailed in the editorial, six articles describe objective-driven, long-term initiatives which were set up by biologists to engage in the various kinds of dialogue mentioned above; two articles describe how to develop multi-facetted strategies and resources for wider advocacy and scicomm (one promoting research on fruit flies the other on stem cells); two articles demonstrate how long-term collaboration with teachers and schools can be achieved leading to the design of curriculum-relevant biology lessons for primary schools and secondary schools; and two articles are concerned with dialogue within science communities, i.e. how to establish collaborations between scientist and clinicians and between scientists in Europe and Africa. All these initiatives (and many more are listed in Boxes 1 and 2 of the editorial) demonstrate how long-term objective setting can provide the creative space and time to achieve momentum and impact through gradually developing and improving scicomm strategies and resources, establishing helpful and often interdisciplinary collaborations, developing an online presence and strategies for sustainability (e.g. obtaining funding, achieving recognition and reward). Whilst this is clearly more than can be achieved by isolated scicomm activities, another two articles in our special issue go even a step further by addressing how learned societies can promote scicomm activities and initiatives, and how social platforms (here The Node) can help to create scicomm networks.
Achieving collaborations between scientists and academic science communicators
The special issue also addresses another important problem: the numerous and highly creative scicomm initiatives established by biomedical scientists are rarely published by biology or scicomm journals. As a consequence, this rich pool of strategies and resources is not being explained and shared and has little chance to inspire others to participate in scicomm or improve their strategies. Furthermore, those driving the initiatives miss out on publications as the main career currency for academic scientists. As discussed in our editorial, many biology journals seem to fail to see the importance of these initiatives for their field, whereas scicomm journals usually want to see statistical support and evidence (which scientists hardly have the time to deliver). We therefore recommended to authors of our special issue a descriptive and less evidence-based style, with the main objective of sharing experiences and aiming to generate a helpful and much needed scicomm strategy resource.
Many of these scicomm initiatives were developed out of individual intuition, thus providing colourful diversity. This offers fantastic opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration with academic science communicators (called “communicators” from now on). For example, by comparing and contrasting initiatives, communicators might identify new strategies that work well in practice, and through collaboration with scientists they would have opportunities to test and apply theoretical concepts in practical application. This, in turn, would introduce scientists to academic concepts of scicomm (and make them aware that such concepts even exist!), thus further enriching their strategy pools. To facilitate the latter, two articles in our special issue provide advice on general scicomm practice and on evaluation; these are written by communicators in a language accessible to non-specialists – further highlighting the current problem that field-specific publication styles can form a barrier to interdisciplinary collaboration.
In conclusion, the challenges of making science an integral part of society requires unremitting dialogue in many directions for which scientists hardly find the time. However, the strategies highlighted here provide solutions by focussing on long-term strategies, clear objective-setting, interdisciplinary collaboration and, ultimately, the formation of scicomm networks sharing resources and workload and maximising the outcome. As mentioned above, I still find it difficult to measure potential impact regarding my own participation in scicomm. However, I also feel that more and more people start lending their support (see our impact document) and maintain the hope that persistent continuation with our initiatives will lead to the necessary dynamics that will eventually result in the formation of scicomm networks with a realistic chance of achieving a better understanding and acceptance of basic biomedical research in society.
According to the US’ National Research Council, over half of initial pregnancies are affected by developmental defects, ~3% of live births suffer from major developmental aberrations, ~70% of neonatal deaths and 22% of infant deaths have developmental causes, and ~30% of admissions to paediatric hospitals are due to developmental defects. The causes can be random errors, inherited or acquired gene mutations or toxins – as illustrated by severe limb malformations of thousands of new-borns during the thalidomide/Contergan drug scandal in the 1950s, or the stark increase in birth defects after the Bhopal gas catastrophe in 1984.
Matthew Cobb is an inspiring advocate and communicator of science, in particular of biology. This is clearly reflected in his 
Gedankenexperimente 
