TU-Day

The TU-DAY is the open day of our university, the Technische Universität (TU) Braunschweig. The event is aimed at a wide audience and not restricted to people engaged in science. Therefore, the institutions and working groups of the university used the opportunity to introduce themselves and present their research to the public – and so did we!
The members of our team spent all day at our stand to inform interested visitors about our project and synthetic biology in general. In doing so, we were able to clear up some prejudices towards hotly debated topics like genetically modified organisms - without trivializing the risks that might come along with their use. Furthermore, we put our cooperation with the iGEM team of the University of Virginia into practice by conducting their survey on the acceptance of synthetic biology which we had translated to German for this purpose.
A highlight of our stand was our experiment station for kids. Children were taken by the hand here and performed a series of three experiments relating to milk under our instruction. We made various components of milk visible and explained them to our young visitors. During another popular experiment we coloured the milk with food dye and produced amazing colourful patterns by applying a drop of tenside. The amazed looks on the children’s faces made the event even more enjoyable.

European Researchers' Night

The European Researchers’ Night is an annual event “dedicated to popular science and fun learning”, as the organizers put it - and we were eager to live up to that! Taking place in hundreds of cities all over Europe from Portugal to Turkey on September 26, 2014, the ERN gives scientists the opportunity to point out the importance of their research and their motivation behind it in an entertaining way. The city of Braunschweig had the privilege to host the ERN as the only location in Germany this year, next to metropolises like London, Paris and Rome - quite adequate, as the Braunschweig region is the European leader in research and development [1]. Therefore, there was a bet that at least 1,000 researchers from the area were to assemble at Braunschweig’s Schlossplatz - and the bet was won! Our stand, located right in front of a big shopping mall, was visited by a variety of people, some of whom had probably not expected to be informed about synthetic biology that day! For children, we had some pictures to color and they could also have their own faces painted with a cow as a motive. Next to other fun acitivies like foosball, the main focus was, of course, on presenting the iGEM idea and our project to visitors - and our own motivation to take part in such a competition, despite also being kept busy by our regular studies. The eye-catcher of our stand was a large tree which we had made out of craft wire and plastic sheets. During the course of the day this tree was being decorated with survey sheets we had asked our visitors to fill out. The survey dealt with the question in what way the people expected synthetic biology to benefit humanity.

Lehr Leo

The “Tag der Lehre” (translates to “Day of Teaching”) hosted by our university is dedicated to the appreciation of innovative teaching concepts and provides a platform for exchange about this topic. This is quite important to us because from our point of view synthetic biology is not yet appropriately represented in our curriculum. Therefore, we seized the opportunity and presented our iGEM team and project as a figurehead for synthetic biology at our university. In doing so, we made clear that it is an important subject with considerable significance not only from a scientific, but also from a societal perspective.
Our stand at the “Tag der Lehre” was visited by a variety of people from all kinds of professions and disciplines towards whom we could emphasize our concern. As some of them were university professors and even the principal was present, we think we might have come a little closer to our aim. The day ended with a science slam in which we presented our project in an entertaining way and actually won first prize - which we consider to be a positive sign for the future of synthetic biology at our university.

Our Intern Benjamin

In August we had a visitor in our lab for two weeks. Benjamin, a pupil from a local school, had decided to expand his knowledge on Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology. He proved to be very keen to learn new things and to become a valuable (albeit short-term) member of our team. Here is how he evaluates his stay with us:
“During the past two weeks I did an internship at the Institute for Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics of the TU Braunschweig. It was unique in several ways: I had the opportunity to look over the iGEM team members’ shoulders, to ask questions and I could even contribute to their project by carrying out some smaller tasks. These two weeks were eventful and exciting for me and I do not regret investing part of my holidays for them. I got a great insight into Biotechnology, especially the lab work.”
And although he may be a little too young for iGEM, he still acquired a taste for the idea behind the competition: “Concerning iGEM, I am particularly fascinated by the fact that the project is in the students’ hands from start to finish and that they can get so much out of their contribution. Maybe I will also take this direction later and take part in the competition… Lots of luck to the Braunschweig iGEMers and I keep my fingers crossed for E. cowli to eventually be able to degrade methane. THANK YOU for the great internship!”

Survey on eating habits

Recent reports show that the public interest in vegan diets is on the rise [1]. Indeed, if more people forwent consuming beef and dairy products, methane emissions caused by livestock farming could be drastically reduced. In order to get further insight into the public’s willingness to change their diet for the sake of the climate we conducted a survey - before the revelation of our project, so that they would not be influenced. The exact question was: “Could you imagine changing your nutrition such that there are no more dairy or beef products on the menu to reduce the output of greenhouse gases?” The results are shown in the diagram at the left.
Even confronted with the possible consequences of their consume of dairy and beef products, most people were not willing to change their nutrition for a better climate. Additionally, it should be considered that clicking “Yes” in a survey is probably much easier than turning something into action for real, so in reality the “No” fraction would probably even more numerous. This implements that there should be another way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock, and with our project we want to show how this could be achieved.

Survey on synthetic biology

We also wanted to figure out what the public expects synthetic biology to contribute to society and in which areas that synthetic biology is applied in they wish the most for progress. Among these areas are medicine, renewable energy, environment, and nutrition. To those who were not familiar with the term “synthetic biology” we gave a short introduction, of course without influencing their opinion. The question was: “In which of the areas where synthetic biology is applied do you wish for progress?” Apparently most people are interested in the use of synthetic biology for medicinal or environmental purposes, whereas less wanted synthetic biology to solve problems concerning renewable energy and the least wanted synthetic biology to interfere in nutritional issues. The results for nutrition and renewable energy were somewhat expected - genetically modified food is a hotly debated topic in Germany and renewable energy may be a somewhat intangible term, especially as the connection to synthetic biology is probably not as obvious as for the other areas.
On the other hand, we were quite surprised to find that people obviously cared about the environment as much as about medicinal issues. However, it would sure be interesting to see whether the age group has an influence on what the respective persons chose. Therefore, we also asked for the persons’ ages and got the following results. Especially for environment and medicine it is interesting to see that persons younger than 40 years and persons of 40 years or older seem to form two distinct groups with equally distinct opinions. While the younger ones decided for environment more often, the opposite is the case for the older ones who are more interested in the use of synthetic biology for medicine. Although these differences might not be significant one can still assume that the age influences a person’s priorities. Preservation is a relatively new issue which might explain that younger ones seem to be more interested in it. This is probably not to the same degree the case for older people who instead wish for progress in more conventional areas like medicine, which also have a more direct influence on humans.
In general, however, there is a discrepancy of opinions. On the one hand, many people want to preserve the environment, but on the other hand, only few would be willing to change their diets in order to achieve this.

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