Every summer the Familie-Osthushenrich-Foundation and the municipal government give young students the opportunity to
experience working in a microbiological laboratory and to learn about research done at the CeBiTec.
As part of the CeBiTec we were glad to present iGEM to the attendees, contribute by advising the young participants in the lab and organizing
a big barbecue in the evening. Generally, the students stay one week
at the institute and learn about different topics like biotechnology, molecular biology, synthetic biology and bioinformatics. The program also includes a practical
part regarding taxonomy, bioinformatics, proteomics and synthetic biology. The iGEM team
contributed by providing and supervising the experiments of this very last part.
Moreover, we had several discussions about the implications of synthetic biology on the society.
Two of our members instruct the students to do an electroporation
2407 x 1520
During this week, we talked a lot about synthetic biology and our experiments. Furthermore we allowed the students to do genetic engineering experiments.
We instructed the teenagers to perform basic laboratory techniques such as transformation, plasmid isolation and plating on selective agar. In detail, the experiments were done
to identify different resistances and different fluorescence proteins encoded on different plasmids. By transforming both plasmids and plating on different antibiotics
the students were able to distinguish between GFP on a plasmid carrying an ampicillin resistance, and RFP on a plasmid carrying a kanamycin resistance(Fig. XXXXX). Many of the students showed
big interest in our projects and some of them were convinced to study in the field of biology and were fascinated by
the opportunity to participate in iGEM in the near future. While teaching in the academy we improved our teaching skills.
Additionally, we observed several issues in the communication.
The understanding of certain terms was completely different to our expectation and intention.
Seeing the next generation of scientists we were once again reminded of the importance of outreach.
Engaging in dialogues with people outside of the lab is essential when strengthening the reputation
of synthetic biology. We need to understand the concerns of the public to address these issues properly.
Even the students showed a strong interest in other aspects than the scientific ones.
We talked a lot about morality and responsibility in synthetic biology as well as social aspects in a group project such
as iGEM. At the end of the week we knew about the importance of talking about scientific topics in a simple yet
respectful way. We were further encouraged to find new ways of communicating our project.
