Team:BGU Israel/Human Practice/Spread The Word

Few months ago, when we first realized what we want to create in our project, we have started to take some actions in order to publicize our idea and raise some contributions. Right on the beginning we noticed the big challenge with advertising a synthetic biology project which deals with medicine. People without a scientific background, are really afraid from the idea of genetic engineered cure for obesity.

Publication in a scientific blog "Hayadan" before the branding

http://www.hayadan.org.il/bgu-igem-0609149

They are OK with synthetic chemicals with tons of side effects, but "don't you dare mess with my genes". We tried to explain the advantages and the intelligent behind the mechanism, but it is not so easy to describe it, even to biologists. When we discussed how to describe the mechanism in a video, the idea of using metaphors for the biology came up. We invented an "Inner doctor" which can do whatever to nucleic acids does. Instead of a promoter which sensitive to special conditions for example, the "Doctor" can examine his surroundings and act accordingly. It was a lot easier to give a "face" to the mechanism.

Our campaign in the social media:

Spread the word of iGEM competition and our '' Inner Doctor" project

The "Inner Doctor" became a brand. It was much more accessible than "self regulated plasmids" and much more trustworthy than genetic engineered machines. The video became viral and the project was a hit. We had Meetings with around 50 stakeholders, university leaders, public figures, Doctors, Professors, CEOs and more- visit our notebook and attributions pages for the complete list. But the amazing part was the feedbacks from the public without the biological knowledge which were intrigued to understand how the doctor works and what it's made of.

With the Mayor of BeerSheva, Mr. Ruvik Danilovich

Meeting With Israel's Minister of Health, Yael German.

They were not concerned about the synthetic biology and only wanted to know when it becomes a real medication, some of them even volunteered to participate in the "hypothetical" clinical trial. Besides the advertising of our project, we think our campaign made a great promotion to the synthetic biology topic and its huge potential in many fields of research.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152389418977689&fref=nf

http://bioengineer.org/bgu-isreal-igem-2014-team/