The biotechnology design (biodesign) enterprise is reshaping our relationship with nature and requires broad public engagement for innovative and ethical development. However, current biodesign programs are often limited to formal education settings such as universities, community colleges, and high schools. To grow deeper networks with and among communities that are often excluded, we need new approaches and learning spaces. These must expand the diversity of voices that frame biodesign questions and drive when, where, and how we practice biotechnology design. Through our work, we have found that community-based biodesign spaces (informal learning spaces) can empower multidirectional and multigenerational knowledge exchange and advance a more diverse, inclusive, and innovative biodesign enterprise. In this article, we illustrate the benefits of a biodesign education ecosystem through case studies of three learning spaces: (1) a community bio laboratory, (2) an educational summer camp, and (3) an art-based maker space. This informal educational ecosystem brings together artists, educators, activists, and researchers to elevate ancestral science knowledge, creativity, play, and storytelling as central to biodesign education. While each is important independently, emergent power comes from connections between community biotechnology design spaces. By highlighting successful approaches used across these spaces, our three case studies show how diverse community engagement can sustain a vibrant biodesign ecosystem. Our findings can inform existing biodesign approaches and broaden their impact to grow a more innovative, relevant, and accountable biodesign enterprise.

The Society for Conservation Biology has highlighted the vital importance of social sciences in animal conservation. For farm animals, their close association with humans over many centuries makes it more sensible and necessary to incorporate social sciences and humanity studies into the conservation efforts. In this review, we report a multidisciplinary study for the conservation of a unique native cattle population, the Yakutian cattle, which are the last remnants of the Turano-Mongolian Bos taurus cattle from Siberia, the far east of Russia. These cattle, which are well adapted to the severe climate and environmental conditions in the northeast Siberian territory, are gaining popularity as a hardy, adapted and useful genetic resource, particularly when man is facing the challenge of global climate change. However, the population is categorized by the FAO as “rare and endangered”. Our multidisciplinary collaborative study has proved to be successful through animal genetics, anthropology, geography, history, sociology and bio-art, and could be applied also in developing conservation programmes for other livestock, wild animals or plants.