Team:FAU Erlangen/Human Practices

iGEM Erlangen


School Laboratory

To introduce our project to the public, we chose to work together with the Christoph-Jacob Treu (CJT) high school. The school gave us the opportunity to participate in their summer festival in July. As the audience members included 5-year-old siblings as well as their parents and grandparents, we decided to do a small workshop on the manufacturing of do-it-yourself solar cells.

How to build your own solar cell

In this tutorial, the construction of a DSSC will be explained in detail.

Materials

  • 2 FTO glass slides
  • 1 small normal glass slide
  • 4 g TiO2
  • 5 ml HCl (1M)
  • Pencil
  • Scotch tape
  • Bunsen Burner
  • Hibiscus tea
  • Blow-dryer
  • I2/KI solution
  • 2 clips
  • 2 alligator clips
  • Multimeter
  • Cables
  • Sunlight or lamp


  1. First of all, two FTO glass slides have to be cleaned. One is put aside for later use, the other one will be coated with a layer of TiO2. TiO2 is mixed with HCl and ground until no lumps are left, yielding a viscous paste. On the conducting side of the FTO, two long borders and one short border are masked with scotch tape. Approximately 100 µl of the TiO2 paste are placed onto the FTO and spread evenly in the area between the scotch tape using the normal glass slide. By doing this, a 100 µm thin layer of TiO2 is created. The layer has to be dried for 20 minutes using a blow-dryer. In order to increase the surface of the TiO2 layer for better dye adsorption, the FTO is sintered. In other words, it is placed on a tripod with a working Bunsen burner underneath. After five minutes the Bunsen burner is turned off and the FTO is left to cool.

  2. When this is done, the TiO2 layer is dipped in freshly prepared hibiscus tea and the now colored FTO is blow-dried again.

  3. The conducting site of the second FTO is shaded with graphite using a pencil.

  4. A few drops of the I2/KI electrolyte are added onto the TiO2 layer of the first FTO. Now both FTOs are combined so that both conductive sides, i.e. the TiO2 layer and the graphite, touch each other. Furthermore, both FTOs need to have a small shift to the shorter side so that they can be connected to a multimeter. This whole setup is secured using two clips.

  5. Finally, the DSSC is connected to a multimeter by attaching the cables and alligator clips on the offset of the FTOs. During irradiation with sunlight or a lamp, current and voltage can be measured.



“Do-it-yourself Solar Cells LAUF –
At the summer festival on July 23th of the CJT high school, students of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg invite everyone to a do-it-yourself solar cells workshop. The iGEM Team of the University (“international Genetically Engineered Machine”) wants to build solar cells from toothpaste and tea together with all visitors. This event is a part of the team's project for the iGEM competition. iGEM offers an international platform for college and high school projects in the area of synthetic biology. Next to lab work, maintaining public relations is mandatory to inform people of all ages about the various aspects of genetic engineering. The workshop experiments will take place once at 10 am and once at 1 pm.”



As the pictures show, our littlest visitors had a lot of fun and were very interested in creating something new with their own hands. Of course, the competition “Who has the best solar cell?” spurred the children on. The parents were also excited to make solar cells out of everyday articles such as tea and toothpaste and even wanted to know the chemical reactions behind these special photovoltaic cells.

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All in all, it was a fantastic experience and we found it very inspiring to look on the concentrated yet fascinated happy faces! During our next visit to the CJT high school in October, we invited students and their families to a public discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of the diverse applications of genetic engineering.


Science Day

Genetic engineering suffers from a bad reputation these days. Almost everyone has certain worries about this issue. Many negative critiques concerning genetic engineering are based on envisioned devastating effects in the future, such as environmental destruction due to a) monocultural farming and dubious actions by corporations like Monsanto and b) genomic impairment of genetically modified plants. Thinking about cloning techniques – especially since the first cloned animal, the sheep Dolly - and especially so-called designer babies tends to give people goose bumps.
Then why is it still a topic if even thinking about it is reprehensible? Why don’t we just shut down any and all research on it? The answer is: Genetic engineering actually is not as scary as it is made out to be. If you want to search for positive effects, you may have to rummage through a ton of negative media and pseudo-scientific articles. However, your persistence will pay off, because there is indeed a lot of promising research out there that both humanity as a whole and the environment can benefit from.



Dolly the Clone Sheep and GM Vegetables

LAUF - Within the scope of the project “Science meets School”, the Christoph-Jacob-Treu high school invites everyone to a public discourse at the school cafeteria today, October 6th, at 7.30 p.m. The iGEM Team of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg is giving a talk about genetic engineering. The students deliver an infotainment lecture about the advantages and risks of genetic engineering. The sheep Dolly combined with genetically modified vegetables results in an exciting mix with an indeterminate outcome, as the speakers promise. Everyone interested is welcome, admission is free.



To overcome some of the worries regarding this topic, we wanted to highlight the positive aspects to a public audience. Hence, we gave a lecture in a high school after inviting everyone affiliated with the school and the people living nearby by printing an article in the local newspaper. To make it especially appealing, we combined the two most extreme and commonly known aspects of genetic engineering in the lecture’s title: “Genetic Engineering – Between saving the world and Jurassic Park”.
Starting the evening with the most exaggerated fear concerning genetic engineering – dinosaurs being revived and reconquering the world – we first showed a few scenes from the “Jurassic World” movie trailer. To give this frightening side a counterpart, we presented the real methods and applications of contemporary genetic engineering. We divided the lecture into four parts: green (agriculture), red (medicine), gray (environment) genetic engineering and last but not least, information about the iGEM competition, both in general and regarding specific projects, including our own “Coli-voltaic”.
Filip started by showing the audience how “near” we are to cloning dinosaurs by introducing Dolly, the cloned sheep. Continuing with the green part, he explained, among other things, the difference between traditional breeding and modern genetic procedures and described the impact the latter had on agriculture at the moment, exemplified by the Golden Rice issue.

In the next part of the lecture, Hedda talked about genetic methods in modern medicine, telling the listeners about the different fields of application like tissue engineering and production of medicines, illustrated by the development of insulin production.
On gray genetic engineering, Vladyslav presented some positive developments in environment protection achieved by utilizing genetic methods. For example, he mentioned removing petroleum from the sea after oil spills and cleaning the wastewater of medicine residues. To lead over to the last part, he described the iGEM project of Bielefeld in 2012 that aimed at removing synthetic estrogen from wastewater.
Before the end, Ariane explained what iGEM is and what competing in iGEM means, trying to demonstrate how it combines all three previously covered parts of genetic engineering by introducing three successful former iGEM projects who founded startups afterwards.
For the grand finale, we showed our home-made Coli-voltaic cartoon to the audience, presenting our own project and goals for this year.
Subsequently, the attendees had the opportunity to ask all they wanted to know about our presentation and the topics addressed as well as talk to us individually. This resulted in a short discussion about genetic engineering in agriculture with some of the school’s teachers. Moreover, we even found some candidates for our team next year.
As a token of gratitude, we were kindly given a bottle of tasty Spanish red wine by the school’s representatives. Interestingly, the wine was biologically produced, mirroring the teachers’ main opinion about genetic engineering in farming.
What we learned from this evening while talking about synthetic biology to a curious audience, is that there is, indeed, a great demand for clear and objective information about genetic engineering, its methods and how it affects the individual and the environment. Also, there are many more concerns about green biotechnology than about any other, regarding not only ecological but also economical implications.
In the end, the donation box with “Genetic engineering is great!” on it contained the most money, beating “I don’t care about genetic engineering…” and “Genetic engineering is silly!”. Unfortunately, the voter participation was rather low, which rendered the result not representative (and the donations barely enough to order a pizza).

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