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SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY PERCEPTION

• Rising awareness

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• Acceptance survey

  First we designed a poll aimed at knowing about the current knowledge and prejudices against synthetic biology.
  This survey allowed us to discuss about the relation between the scientific community (biological engineering students) and the general public and to improve their knowledge about Synthetic Biology. We considered the engineer's responsibilities, the impact of our project and the understanding by people.
  So we decided to make a survey targeting high school first year students studying sciences, as they are the future of the scientific community. We surveyed high schoolers from France, Slovakia, the United States of America, China and French Polynesia, hence surveying 160 students from all over the world!
  

  
  

  The results underwent a process of clustering, a computed algorithm aiming at roughly distributing them in different groups according to their answers. By the end of the process all the people who had answered similarly were put together in the same group. From that process we sorted out five « clusters » (the groups), each one with a different profile of answers.
  Then we treated the data to make it more exploitable and easier to understand, but this sort of study is still hard to simplify. The answers were converted to numerical values: answers expressing acceptance toward synthetic biology were given positive values while negative answers towards synthetic biology had negative scores.

  
  
  Here each bar is linked to the mean value corresponding to the answer of a question. Some questions were regrouped together as they were about similar issues related to synthetic biology. Here is what each bar corresponds to :
  

  1. Have you ever heard of synthetic biology?
  2. Would you like to know more about it?
  3. What appreciation level would you give to products of synthetic biology?
  4. Do you think these products are have advantages in everyday life?
  5. What about inconvenients?
  6. If you were given water purified thanks to modified bacteria, would you use it?
  7. Would you use water purified through synthetic biology techniques for domestic purpose?
  8. What about drinking water?

  
  

  We note that the groups containing the most people have the opposite profiles :

  - 24% ('Informed-Favorable') of the people knew about synthetic biology and the issues it raises but were still supportive of it, or at least not against it

  - 25% ('Little informed-Unfavorable') knew a little less about it but were completely opposed to using its products.

  - 17% of people ('Informed-Unfavorable-User with restrictions') have, like in the 'Little informed-Unfavorable' group, a little understanding of what synthetic biology is and are against purifying drinking water through its processes but are fine with using it for purifying water that will be used for domestic purposes.

  The two remaining groups have both little knowledge about synthetic biology.

  However, as we can see there’s a paradox in the answer of the 'Little informed-Favorable-User with restrictions group', which represents 20% of the panel, as they seem rather acceptant of synthetic biology, and yet would choose water purified with physical or chemical methods over methods involving synthetic biology.

  Our interpretation is that despite not being against these techniques, these people may still consider the conventional ones more efficient and safe. They are therefore less oriented towards synthetic biology than the people of the 'Not informed-Favorable group' (14% of the answers) who, despite not knowing anything about synthetic biology, would still be willing to use it without reluctance. We can see it as a proof that many people still don’t have prejudices against this science.

  
  
  We also wanted to determine if the profile was related to geographic localisation and hence, culture. Here are the proportions, in percents, of people from each country in each cluster :
  

  cluster	Informed and favorable	Informed and unfavorable	Not informed and favorable	A little informed and unfavorable	A little informed and favorable
  France	22	31	14	10	23
  USA	75	0	0	0	25
  China	18.4	22.5	14.2	26.5	18.4
  Slovakia	14.3	0	14.3	42.8	28.6
  French Polynesia	23.5	16.5	15.3	25.9	18.8

  
  We can see that the global distributions are the same for the countries in the cluster, except for the USA, but that is because we didn't get much data from there. We conclude that knowledge about synthetic biology is not geography dependent, which is probably because it is a really recent field of science that manage to diffuse everywhere at the same pace.

Spreading the word

Gladly, our message was heard loud and clear. After finding the general opinion about synthetic biology in a scientific environment, the next step was to raise awareness to the not specialized audience. Several publications in the newspaper or at the television gave voice to our project. Our initiative was appreciated and at the same time enabled us to share the amazing, infinite possibilities that the synthetic biology can offer.

Some of the internet and newspapers articles:

• Direct Matin, from 4th of September 2014, "A l'INSA on mise sur le Nickel pour avoir l'or"
• Le Progrès, from 7th of August 2014, "Des étudiants visent l'or à un concours international d'ingénierie biologique"


• La Biotech, "Les équipes françaises à l'assaut d'IGEM 2014, la compétition mondiale de la biologie de synthétique"


• France 3 Rhône-Alpes, "Des vacances qui pourraient valoir de l'or"


• En Vue, "Participation d'une équipe INSA Lyon au concours IGEM 2014"



Also, the members of the team are actively involved in INSA ADN Concept Club, an association that supports this initiative with its newsletter and many other activities.

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