Policy & Practices

During the course of the past summer, we not only refined the technical and biological side of Cellock Holmes but also considered other aspects of our iGEM project such as social acceptance, biosafety and economical relevance.

Spreading the Idea of Synthetic Biology

Unfortunately, a lot people around the world are scared of genetically modified organisms and any application related to them. Though we believe that a bit of natural skepticism towards new and unproved technologies is not just good but especially desirable, the current fear of Frankenstein organisms escaping from laboratories might be disproportionate and counterproductive to technological and scientific advancement in related fields.

However, as reported, for example, in an article published in a local newspaper's magazine, Kölnische Rundschau, the social acceptance of biotechnological products would be higher if people felt informed better. Following up on this, we thought about how we can inform people factually but in a comprehensible way about gene technology and synthetic biology.

At the same time, young students interested in science and engineering are the most valuable future source of innovation. One day, they might be the researchers who develop the solutions to the most pressing issues of our world.

Combining these two thoughts, we visited two schools, the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium in Aachen and the NEAnderLab in Hilden, and the MakerFaire in Hannover to spread the idea of synthetic biology and to discuss our project with the public. When we organized the Aachen iGEM Meetup 2014, we also made sure to include a public part where all teams who participated in our meetup had the opportunity to present their project to a general audience

     


      2D detection of IPTG and HSL 
     


     Organization and preparation
     

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      Culture medium and culture conditions 
     


     First work on BioBricks
     

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      Genetic methods 
     


     First creation of own BioBricks
     

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      Analytical methods 
     


     Improving our chip technology
     

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