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Since the inception of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, its slogan has been “where science meets society.” This highlights the institute’s deep commitment both past and present to communicate the research and discoveries happening at the IGB with the public, and promote scientific thinking to encourage a new diverse generation of scientists and science-informed citizens. “We established a comprehensive outreach program within a few years of opening the IGB, for several reasons,” said IGB Director Gene Robinson (GNDP). “First, as part of a land-grant university, we have an obligation to engage with the public, locally and at the national level, because genomics can impact people in so many different ways, now and in the future. In addition, outreach programs help enhance the value of our diverse research enterprise, help us make new friends, and provide important professional development opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scientists.” The outreach team at the IGB has organized a suite of events throughout the years, many of which happen annually, that have been growing in size since their start. Here, we highlight the IGB’s major outreach events that bring science and society together. World of Genomics The World of Genomics is the largest broader IGB outreach event, typically seeing thousands of participants across multiple days. Participants can wander the many booths, activities, and games to learn about a variety of scientific disciplines and research happening at the IGB. The event first debuted in 2017 at the Chicago Field Museum and took place over a 3-day period. Activities included driving a robot to learn how robotics can help grow food, looking at prehistoric microorganisms under a scope to understand the evolution of life, examining bee colonies and brains to learn how brains affect behavior, and more. Since then, World of Genomics has been hosted by the St. Louis Science Center and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., with plans for other large-scale in-person events to start again as the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding. Art of Science The Art of Science program is a celebration of common ground between science and art, and will enter its 13th year in 2023. The collection of artwork ranges from microscopic to holistic images, and features both physical and abstract concepts. The program’s goal is to emphasize the diversity of research at the IGB through art, and present research in an eye-catching and understandable way to everyone. IGB’s Creative Program Manager Julia Pollack is the current curator for Art of Science, with previous curators including Kathryn Faith and Noah Dibert. The program is co-sponsored by BodyWork Associates, and artwork from the program has been displayed in numerous places across the country, including Chicago O’Hare airport, local Urbana businesses such as Cafeteria & Company and Broadway Food Hall, the Springer Cultural Center, the I Hotel, Abbott Laboratories and other corporate offices and headquarters, public libraries, the NIH library, and even the U.S. Capitol. Genome Day Genome Day is an annual local open-house event that teaches people of all ages about genomes, DNA, and evolution. When it first started it was held at the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum in Champaign. It moved online with the onset of the pandemic, during which participants could pick up packets from the local libraries and work through the activity over Zoom. Since moving back in person, it has been held in downtown Urbana, where the event typically draws hundreds of people. The event features hands-on, child-friendly activities related to genomics. Participants can extract DNA from strawberry cells, make DNA models, and participate in different activities that highlight how DNA can affect how organisms look and behave. Pollen Power The Pollen Power camp was established in 2013 to foster interest in plant science in the community. The camp encourages participation from local children in underrepresented groups, typically in 6th-8th grade, though the past year focused on younger children. Students learn about interactions between plants and pollinators through a series of hands-on activities, experiments, and crafts led by IGB researchers and outreach staff. In addition to plant science, children also develop skills and problem-solving abilities, and learn how to observe the world around them as scientists. The pandemic led to the camp activities being moved online, with activity kits handed out in advance to the children. This past year the event was once again held in person with great success. Genomics for Professionals Genomics for Professionals aims to teach basic concepts of biology and genomics to professionals within a specific public sector so they are better equipped for dealing with genomics when the need arises in their jobs. In the past the program has partnered with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Courts and Sciences Institute, the Minimum Continuing Legal Education Board of the Supreme Court of Illinois, Next Generation Science Standards, and the University of Illinois College of Law and College of Media to bring scientific teachings to a variety of professional groups. The program has covered many job sectors over the years, including judges, lawyers, clinicians, journalists, police officers, and more. The program includes lectures led by researchers as well as a hands-on component relevant to the specific sector. STEAM TRAIN STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) TRAIN (Transdisciplinary Research Across Institutional Near-peers) is a program partnered with the Champaign Franklin STEAM Academy that allows middle school students the opportunity to conduct a research project on whatever they want, provided that it is feasible. The students receive two levels of mentorship during the project: high school students from University Laboratory High School, and researchers at the IGB. Both give guidance on how to design the project the students are interested in, and IGB provides any tools necessary to accomplish it. Past projects include studying the behavior of poison dart frogs, plant growth under different conditions, and even metabolism in the Minecraft universe. Game Day Genomics Game Day Genomics takes place outside of most home football games during tailgating. Tailgating participants can engage with games and activities designed to teach people of all ages about genomes and biology while they wait for the big game to begin. Osher Lifelong Learning Institute OLLI partnered with the IGB and Beckman Institute in 2009 to create a citizen science program that brings in people over 50 years of age who are curious about scientific research yet have never had the opportunity to try it. OLLI members are matched with IGB or Beckman researchers, and are trained in knowledge and skills to make meaningful contributions to a research project. Members are paired with a graduate student or postdoctoral research associate for hands-on mentoring and training, and volunteer for several hours each week in the lab. Vaccine Outreach The pandemic brought about a wave of misinformation and confusion about the COVID-19 vaccines as they were released. To help counter this, outreach members of the IGB attended a variety of community and PTA meetings, as well as hosted forums at the library and online, to teach about the benefits and safety of vaccinations. The team also created fun visuals on social media to educate the public, including graphs made of candy that showed transmission rates in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations.
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CLICK TO READ ON IGB'S WEBSITE Infectious diseases are some of the strongest selective pressures in human evolution, selecting for genetic variants that increase resistance to infection. In the face of a pandemic, resistance to the disease undergoes strong positive selection that likely affects the genetic makeup of the population afterward. The Black Death, otherwise known as the Bubonic Plague, remains the most devastating pandemic in recorded history, reducing the European population by 30-50% within a 4-year span (1346-1350) and affecting nearly all of Afro-Eurasia. The Black Death was caused by Yersinia pestis, a highly contagious and deadly bacterium that quickly spread across the eastern continents. How did this plague alter the population’s genetic composition, and did any alleles confer protection in those that survived? These questions are explored in a new paper published in Nature, featuring a collaboration between the labs of Luis Barreiro, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, Hendrik Poinar, professor of anthropology at McMaster University, and Javier Pizarro-Cerda, Head of the World Health Organization Collaborating Research and Reference Center for Yersinia at the Pasteur Institute. Poinar, an expert in ancient genomes and Y. pestis, and Barreiro, who has pioneered approaches to study how genetic variation affects the response to infection, are co-corresponding authors on the paper. The work was led by co-first authors Jennifer Klunk, a graduate student in Poinar’s lab during the study and now a lead scientist at Daicel Arbor Biosciences, and Tauras Vilgalys, a postdoctoral fellow in Barreiro’s lab. “This was a huge interdisciplinary team that brought their experiences, their knowledge, and their questions to the project together,” Klunk described. “The group was composed of historians, anthropologists, geneticists, and more, providing a wide range of perspectives and tools to work with.” The researchers collected ancient DNA across London and Denmark from individuals who died either shortly before, during, or after the Black Death. The DNA was then sequenced, and targeted immune genes were examined across the three time-points to look for large changes in variant frequency over time. Variants that provide protection from Y. pestis should be more frequent in post-Black Death samples compared to those that died during the plague, and variants that confer susceptibility should show the opposite pattern. The researchers found that 4 gene loci, including variants near ERAP2 and TICAM2, matched this pattern. ERAP2 is active in antigen presenting cells, like macrophages, which eat and break down pathogens, and present a piece of the pathogen, called an antigen, to other immune cells to help the body learn how to fight it. TICAM2 encodes an adapter protein for a macrophage surface protein called TLR4, which detects foreign gram-negative bacteria in the body, like Y. pestis. The selected variants were associated with differences in the expression of these two genes. From the genotype data, researchers estimated that people with selected variants of these genes were 40% more likely to survive the plague. To test how these variants favored against Y. pestis infection, monocytes were collected from the blood of living individuals with the different variants for ERAP2 and TICAM2, developed into macrophages, and exposed in vitro to Y. pestis. Macrophages with variants that caused higher expression of ERAP2 were more efficient at clearing Y. pestis than macrophages without the protective allele. Jessica Brinkworth (IGOH, GNDP), an assistant professor of anthropology at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who contributed functional data to the study, described how macrophages were critical to infection of Y. pestis: “Y. pestis is really sneaky,” Jessica described. “Once it's at 37° Celsius, it breaks down the lipopolysaccharide on its cell surface so that TLR4 can’t see it anymore, basically making itself invisible. This means that there's a real clock on detecting it - it could be minutes right before these massive changes happen. Then, it preferentially infects macrophages and turns them into little zombies, forcing them to go to the lymph nodes so Y. pestis can multiply.” Immune cells have a small window to detect Y. pestis and destroy it, and macrophages that come into contact with the bacteria need to be able to resist being hijacked to limit spread. The researchers’ results show that genetic variation near ERAP2 and TICAM2 may improve detection of and resistance to Y. pestis. This likely protected people with these variants during the Black Death, increasing their chance of survival. “I was surprised that we could actually figure out that ERAP2 has an effect on bacterial clearance in vitro,” said Vilgalys. “And that's kind of surprising considering its canonical role is antigen presentation, which involves interactions of multiple cell types, not just macrophages. So what we see suggests that ERAP2 is doing something non-canonical to affect the immune response in isolated macrophages.” Variants near ERAP2 and TICAM2 also help against an array of other pathogens, but not without a trade-off. In particular, higher expression of ERAP2 is associated with autoimmune disorders in modern day humans, including Crohn’s disease. This balancing selection likely explains why different variants for these genes are still present in the population today. “It was exciting once we delved into to the variants, to see that our variants of interest show this signal of balancing selection,” Klunk said. “We were able to say one of the variants we're looking at clearly shows a signal of selective pressure over the course of Black Death, and we showed that it’s definitely involved in the immune response to Y. pestis, as well as other pathogens. But today that variant is also associated with a higher risk of autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. So being able to make that link was like, wow, that's something special.” “I think studies like this help us understand why we're at risk for certain diseases, and how past pandemics have shaped current disease risks,” Vilgalys said. “Why does 50% of the population have these ERAP2 variants that put you at increased risk for chronic disease? Part of the reason is that our genomes have been shaped by past infectious disease, like the Black Death. Across the board, if we were to look at a lot of risk alleles for modern disorders, you're probably going to see that those are protective against some disease that we've had in the past.” The team’s next steps are to look at the whole genome, rather than just immune genes, to see if any other areas were affected by the Black Death, or might have conferred resistance. Vilgalys described his excitement to look at other aspects of ancient genomes during the Black Death, such as effects of demography and migration. The team also plans to look into ERAP2 variants to better understand how it conveys protection against Y. pestis. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Chicago Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Inflammatory Intestinal Disorders, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the University of Chicago, and a SSHRC Insight Development grant. The paper is titled "Evolution of immune genes is associated with the Black Death" (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05349-x). |