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.
Fig. 1: Two of our members instruct the students to do an electroporation
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 (Fig. 1). 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. 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.
Postcards - raising synthetic biology awareness on 150cm²
When it comes to synthetic biology the public may be prejudiced. This is most presumably caused due to misconceptions. This year's iGEM team Düsseldorf from the HHU Düsseldorf felt called upon tackling this issue and motivate the people to overcome their skepticism. Thus the idea to create and distribute educational postcards in the context of synthetic biology emerged.
Gathering the creativity of all other German iGEM teams, topics ranging from the production of insulin to gene editing were covered. We exchanged packs of about 100 postcards with some of the other teams to be able to have a broader area to spread them. This led to receiving postcards from the teams from Aachen, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, Hannover, Goettingen and Tuebingen. Our postcard was designed after the motto 'Tolerance for Transgenes'. By that we demanded for a higher level of tolerance for GMO's which in general are negatively connoted in Germany and pointed towards their advantages.
We would like to thank team Düsseldorf for letting us join their campaign. Hopefully, many will follow their example and engage in public communication!
Bielefeld "Mittelstandsforum" 2016
Bielefeld has a strong collective of mid-sized companies, including certain innovative and young start-ups from different industries. At March 13th iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec was invited to the 13th Bielefelder "Mittelstandsforum" (Link to German program: http://www.wege-bielefeld.de/newsletter/Mittelstandsforum-2016.pdf). The annual event is a meetup for people from economy, research and politics. Under the slogan "We back on special ideas" ("Wir setzen auf besondere Ideen") young entrepreneurs and academics were encouraged to present their business and projects. Together with members from iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec 2015 we had the chance to represent iGEM and Bielefeld University. This was a great opportunity to tell people about the iGEM competition and our projects.
Afterwards, there was time for further conversations and discussions with the visitors. We could earn some useful tips, especially for entrepreneur and marketing aspects of our project. We used it, to expend our contacts to local business, partly leading to an active long-term exchange between iGEM and public. These advices became very useful during our project development. Moreover, we relied on these new contacts to address several issues.
CeBiTec Symposium "Microbial Genomics and Metagenomics in Human Health and Disease"
From July 4th to 6th we had the chance to present our project to scientific audience from all over Germany and Europe at the 11th CeBiTec symposium (Link: http://www.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de/index.php/events/conferences/459-2016-04-07-11th-cebitec-symposium). The conference with the topic "Microbial Genomics and Metagenomics in Human Health and Disease" occurs at the "Center of Interdisciplinary Research" of Bielefeld University. Among many interesting lectures and workshops, there was a poster session and much time for the scientific exchange. We were proud to have the opportunity to show our newly designed poster (Fig. …….) to many interested visitors. Participating experts from the field of biology and medicine provided us with a lot of useful tips and their opinions about our project.
