Life-Changing Science: The BioBuilder Podcast:
S1E4: Yesenia Collins.
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Hello and welcome to Life Changing Science, the BioBuilder podcast. I'm your host, Zeeshan, and my guest today is Yesenia Collins. Yesenia has been a rockstar bio builder club leader at the great Tinsborough High School team. She is an author of several publications from their work. She has also been a powerful ambassador for the bio builder program, recording, competing activities for the newer bio builders and meeting the Massachusetts secretary of...
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workforce development this past spring. She is a gym and has just started a biochem undergrad at Georgia Tech. I am super excited to have her on the show. So let's dive right into this episode.
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So I grew up in Tinsboro, Massachusetts. It's a small town, 40 minutes north of Boston, almost in New Hampshire. And yeah, it's a pretty small town. My graduating class from high school was a little over 100. But it's a great place. I'm glad I grew up there. Yeah, nice. Do you have any siblings? Yeah, I have one younger brother. His name's Thomas. He's.
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just a few years younger than me. And he did do Bible builders with me my last year of high school, which was awesome. I was so glad I got to work with him. Yeah, wow, so that's like the Bible builder family. I'm curious to understand what you first learned about the principles and methodologies of synthetic biology. So before high school, I never heard of it. I had no idea what that was and...
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I actually first learned about it through BioLother Club. The first day of school and high school, or maybe the second day, there was an announcement over the loudspeakers. And they were like, if you like science and you like being creative, then you should join our BioLother team. So I decided to go check it out. And that's when I started learning about it. And I realized that I was really interested. OK, so this is just so that I understand, grade 9? Yeah.
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What was what do you call the the first few projects you worked on at bio builder? How were the first few weeks like when you first joined a bio builder club? So we had um These little labs that we got to do. Um, like we did the oh that smell lab where we You know engineered bacteria to produce like Different levels of banana scent and we also did the what a colorful world lab
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where we changed the color production of bacteria. And we actually did do those labs in our AP Biology class as well. But I was fortunate that I had already done them through Bible Their Club, so I felt like I had a bit of an advantage. Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. When I joined, I was grade nine, but there were people who were grade 12, so it was great that I had...
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They were there to kind of guide me on how to do these things, because I'd never done any labs like that before. And they were able to explain things and help me out with concepts that I did not understand yet. What were some of the more challenging topics that you found hard? For me, the whole, I don't know, this is quite simple, looking at it now. But I found just the concept of PCR.
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difficult to understand when I first learned about it. What are some of the concepts that you found, like just early on learning about, synthetic biology was new, bio-builder was new? I think definitely just the idea of a plasmid in general was kind of hard for me to grasp when I first heard it. I think I heard the term in eighth grade, but I didn't really understand it. And it did take me, honestly, two years.
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before it suddenly clicked for me what that really meant. And when we're designing these parts with a promoter, ribosomal binding site, it took me a little bit to finally, I was like, oh, I understand now how this is all working together. Did you use BenchLink to design plasmids? So yes. We did use BenchLink.
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Like the entire time I was in the club, we did switch over to a new program, like the last second in my senior year. But we like, yeah, we did use bench-link and definitely the first two years, like older people in the club were like using it. And I, it was very complicated for me. I just couldn't understand it. And then it was junior year when I finally,
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was able to have a meeting with our mentor, Michael. And then I finally understood how it worked and how to use it. And that aha moment was really awesome when I finally understood how to design a plasmid and how they work. Yeah, yeah. Those little eureka moments are always great.
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And after that initial, you know, the first year in the Biobuilder Club, what was next? Did you continue to work on a new project in grade 10? I think that my experience with Biobuilder was like slightly unique. Like I know that many teams every year they come up with a new idea. They might have new members and they might come up with a new idea. And then you like think of the idea, you might design an experiment, like conduct the experiment, design a plasmid.
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and then you would compile that into a presentation for the final assembly and you'd present that to the other Bible-ther teams. And then after, you can write that up into a paper and publish it in Biotrex. But with our team, we came, so when I joined, they had an idea the prior year, and they decided they didn't wanna continue with it. They wanted a new idea.
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And so that's when we came up with the idea of engineering E. coli to produce a scent that repels mosquitoes. But then we were just really passionate about it. And we just kept re voting to keep doing it, like every year. One year, my junior year, we did do another project alongside. So we didn't stop the old project. We just did two projects at the same time. It was definitely...
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challenging and there were some people who only worked on one project they didn't do both. I worked on both and it was pretty difficult but I think it was worth it. I think it gave me a lot of experience that would be valuable for me in the future. Yeah firstly that's such a cool project like E. coli sent to to repel mosquitoes. During this project you'd have gone through the whole
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You've been designing plasmids, spending a lot of time in the lab, I'm sure. What was your role? What were some of the two or three roles that you had that you found? You felt like a real scientist doing this firsthand investigation. Because how do you start? Starting out, the initial thing was choosing a set.
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Like we knew that E. coli could be engineered to produce a scent. Like we've seen it before with the Oh, that's my lab. So we know it's not. So like, so but then the question is like what scent? And so then I think like initially my role was mainly just research. And so I, you know,
me and some other members of the team and with some guidance from our advisor, Dr. Rebecca Revgala.
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We like she's awesome by the way. Yeah, she's on the podcast So I think we've started looking at like essential oils like naturally occurring Like scent compounds that people at least anecdotally have said work and so then we we just chose one that we chose the compound limonene which can be produced by E. Coli through the
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the MEP pathway. And so we chose that, we had looked up that, like citrus smelling things, that they do have repellent properties, like to a degree. But I think mainly we chose it because it was the easiest one to work with. Like we understood how it worked and there was a genetic part available in the registry already. So that's the main reason why we chose it.
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And then, so that was like that first year. And that was just like the design brief. So it was just like an idea, really. And then the next year we thought, well, what if we actually did it? So we raised a mosquito colony. So my uncle is actually a vector epidemiologist and like works with.
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mosquito-borne illness prevention. And so he sent us, I like talked to him about it, and he sent us some eggs, gave us instructions on how to take care of them. And so we raised 80's ellipictus mosquitoes in a school closet. And then we conducted tests to see which essential oils repel mosquitoes. So we did do the tests originally just with limonene.
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So we did a distillation process to try to isolate it from orange peels and then to like just use that That experiment didn't yield very good results We actually had like none That's that's the first step of being a scientist. We decided to repeat it but with more options We were like it could have been the way that we conducted the experiment But if it's if that son doesn't work, we should just try other sense, too
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Um, and so then we, so we tried a couple, we did like jasmine, wintergreen, um, and the lavender as well. And we came, we decided to go with lavender because it uses basically the same pathway. Um, and we found like a genetic part for that and it did, it did work. Well.
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According to our results, it looked like it does have at least some repellent properties. So then we kind of switched up the project a little. Like the same idea, we just changed the scent that we thought would work. I'd love to ask you more about the process of writing and publishing the Biotrex paper as well as presenting at the BioWilder final assembly. So definitely.
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We had to think ahead a lot. Like we were thinking about it as soon as the season started because it's really a lot and it can speak up on you. So we sort of worked on the paper and the final assembly presentation kind of at the same time, because it's like there's parts that we're using in the presentation that
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would also we want to use in the paper. And so, basically the biggest thing was like record keeping. Like as we're going, we definitely needed to try our best to keep track of everything we did and mostly why. I think the biggest thing is like, we're trying to remember your motivations behind certain things because like you're writing it up and it's like, I know we did this, but like, why did we do that? That's like the biggest thing.
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in like the earlier years. So we definitely try to like always write down like why we were doing it, even if like later we're like, okay, that wasn't a great idea, but at least we had a reason. And so, yeah, definitely I think the best thing was like splitting up certain like aspects
and like dividing up the work. So like some people are gonna like do the research to write like the introduction.
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And then some people are going to work in graphic design and visuals, and then next steps, things like that. And yeah, I'd say, like right, so the, yeah, you come up with the presentation and then you present it at the final assembly. And then right after that is when we go into the paper publication process. And.
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I think what I'd say is that it's sort of easy to write the paper, but it's really hard to edit it into something that's good, that people can understand. Because, you know, I'd say like, yeah, we can write the paper in like five days, but it's not going to be very good. So then we have to, just a lot of editing is the main thing. Making sure that it makes sense not just to us, but like other people who...
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don't know about our project. And I think that that's, so Biotrex requires peer review, which I think is great. I think it's definitely so valuable to get the opinions of other people reading your paper and being like, I don't really understand what you're saying here. And then you have to figure out how to reword it so people who weren't there understand what you're saying. And it's also great to look at what other people are doing.
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just because it's great to see different techniques that people use, even just with graphic design software that we didn't know about. Things like that, it's so great to see what other people are doing and get inspiration in that way. Such a great experience. I'm sure a lot of hard work. Did Biobilder help define what you were most given all of these experiences, being part of the Biobilder Club, the...
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publishing and biotrex, the final assembly, proper first-hand science, as you say, getting your hands dirty. Did Bible help you define what you were most interested in? I think definitely it did. And I can't say I have ever known how interested I am in synthetic biology if I hadn't been in the club or experienced any of this.
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I think it definitely gave me a new appreciation for the scientific method. I kept thinking, when you're thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your life, it's like, what did I like most about high school? And it was definitely this club. It was definitely doing this research and doing these experiments. So it definitely made me realize that I wanted to go into research in some capacity when choosing my future career.
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Do you feel, do you now feel you're more confident as a scientist, confident in your skills as a scientist going into university? Yeah, definitely. I definitely feel like I'm not going to be
surprised by like what it is and like what it entails to like be a scientist and to do research. And I also feel like I understand how to write a paper, like how peer review works.
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Like I definitely think that it's prepared me for this career path. So you said you have a new appreciation of the scientific method. Could you expand on that? Is it the whole design-build test cycle that you went through? Yeah, definitely. And I think just the idea that it is a cycle. It's not like you caught with an idea, it's wrong, now you give up. Like it's not like that. Like you can...
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reassess, redesign, and try again. And you know, you can do that multiple times. And you can get feedback from different people, like things like that. And definitely that there's multiple ways to come to the same conclusion, and that it's good to try different methods to like prove an idea. Yeah, yeah.
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And that's very important to understand as a scientist. So you're starting at, no, you said you started at Georgia this summer term. Yes. Right? So starting at Georgia Tech, do you have to choose, you choose a degree, but you don't have, do you choose a major straight away, or is it like after your first year? So yeah, you do choose a major before you start. Like once you've
been accepted, you kind of, you have an opportunity to change the major that you applied with.
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I think you have to wait a little bit if you want to change it again, but you're certainly able to. I went with a biochemistry major. I thought that that would be the best foundation for whatever I want to do after that in grad school. How influential was BioBuilder in helping you choose the biochemistry?
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as an undergrad major, but you also just mentioned that grad school. So you have thought about this because you got like four years of undergrad, maybe a master's research experience, and then grad school. You're looking at the next 10 years, right? Compared to where you were when you started in year nine with BioBuilder, where you're thinking... Because I'm sure you've got this path in mind.
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that, okay, these are the, I want to do biochemistry. This is what I need to learn. These are the projects I'm interested in. And these are the internships and then grab, like, this is a big, you know, a proper five, 10 year plan. How influential was bio builder in helping you make this roadmap? And what are some of the skills that you learned about? Not, not just, you know, gaining skills as a scientist, uh, when you're doing experiments and designing experiments, but also just about yourselves and about the
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what being a scientist means. So I asked like five questions in one. Okay, I'll start with the first one. I would say Bible River was super influential in deciding what I wanted to do because I really enjoyed writing the paper. Like technical writing was something that I really loved. And I knew that I wanted to do something with that. And I also was able to attend
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virtual conferences through Bible Dirt. And there was like one in particular that like really inspired me. It was this guy, it was this, he was like a pharmacist and he like was originally like a normal pharmacist. And then he ended up working in some biopharmaceutical startups. And that...
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like really piqued my interest was biopharmaceuticals and like how synthetic biology and pharmaceutical research can kind of be combined. Yeah, I was super inspired by that. And I kind of wanted to definitely work in that industry because I definitely am interested in pharmaceuticals. And I love that synthetic biology could be combined with that in some way. And the...
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The guest speaker, he talked about his career path and how he started as a pharmacist, he got a doctor of pharmacy. And so I thought maybe that's what I should do. So I got a job working as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens to see if I wanted to potentially be a pharmacist and then work in research later. And I'm definitely glad that I had that job because it made me realize that I did not wanna be like a pharmacist.
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And that I was really only interested in the research aspect of it, and not so much the pharmacy part of it. The science and tech rather than the practice itself. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that that work experience is what really helped me decide that research was the path that I wanted. Yeah. And on top of like...
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the two, three years that you did with Biobuilder as well. Yes. Yeah. Amazing. Awesome. And finally, I know that you are a student ambassador. What did you gain from being a student ambassador for Biobuilder? I think it was definitely a great experience in that it gave me confidence in the sense that I was
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able to be like confident in like my knowledge about synthetic biology and like my abilities in that area. And I think it also definitely increased my communication skills and teaching skills. I yeah, I was able to like film a tutorial with Natalie Cadell. And then there was a high school in my area that had like a new
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bioleather team and so I was able to go over to their school and give them a little presentation on like what synthetic biology is and how bioleather like works as an organization. And I thought it was like a really worthwhile experience and I was happy to be
able to share something that I'm really interested in with people who are like interested in science too and see if it peaks.
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interest. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's wonderful, such a great opportunity, like to take what you've learned, pay it forward. And, of course, there's so many people who are similar to you in terms of they're now in grade nine, they're now looking into synthetic biology, they're now trying to look at their
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What is your plan for the next year? You know, starting out college, you're going to be doing so much. You're going to be doing a lot of coursework. Of course, there's a big change from high school. What are you looking forward to over the next year? Well, I'm really fortunate that I get to start off as a semester abroad. And so, yeah, I'm going to Oxford, England.
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first semester, like September, you're starting at Oxford? We're actually starting, so it's like shifted a little. So we start like earlier in the summer in Atlanta, and we just get some mandatory prereqs out of the way. And then we start like beginning of August in England. And then we start, and then we end a little early.
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And so then we have like an extended winter break, if that makes sense. Super great opportunity and super fun place. That's super exciting. Well, best of luck. I know that you're going to have a lot of fun there, one starting university and then doing the summer abroad. And finally, sorry, this will be the final question. What advice would you have to prospective bio builder students?
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My advice would be to not be discouraged by not knowing everything or like understanding everything when you first start out. It's like a lot to process, but it's certainly manageable and that there's definitely room for anyone who's interested in it. Like if you're just good at writing, there's like space for you if you're interested in art.
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there's space for you, like in graphic design and things. And that you don't, and that if you're not good at everything, like that's fine. And that it's like an opportunity to like learn more about things that you're not quite as good at and become better in it, but to also strengthen the skills you already have. Thanks once again to Yesenia for joining me today.
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It was a pleasure to talk to her about the role that By-Belder has had in her development as a scientist. What I found really insightful was when Yesenia said that there were multiple ways to come to the same conclusions. It's good to try different methods to prove an idea. I think this gives a great insight into Yesenia's scientific thinking as well as the initiative, drive, and creativity of By-Belder students. I think this episode will be very useful to teachers, parents, and-
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professors as today's episode gives an insight into the BioBuilder program and the significant positive impact that it can have on students, especially when they're choosing their careers. If you would like to learn more about anything discussed in this episode, please refer to the show notes. Join me for the next BioBuilder podcast. We'll welcome another wonderful guest whose career has been influenced by BioBuilder's life-changing science. See you next time.