SynBio Day

On the "Synbio Day" we brought the Synthetic Biology into the Hannover city center - at least the theory behind it. We picked August 8th for this "SynBio Day".
We had the opportunity to educate many a passersby by showing them interesting things about plant biotechnology, discussing methods of everyday laboratory work and showing how much practicioners care about the biological safety. Of course all of our transformed plants and bacteria remained in the laboratory or greenhouse at all times. We were able to inspire the people for in-vitro cultures of orchid, banana, apple and meat-eating plant. Two big posters illustrated the plasmids, proteins and model organisms which we use for the iGEM project. The young visitors have been provided with puzzles and selfmade plant-mandalas in the meanwhile.

Beside posters and examples from the greenhouse, we proudly presented a live-experiment for DNA-Isolation out of hand. However, our visitors favorized the direct confrontation. Herein we not only spoke about our project, but also completed some general questionaires about Biotechnology.

The idea to equip plants with the special ability to remove heavy metals from the environment was well received in Hanover, even by peope who are very skeptical about biotechnology in general.

Gallery

(Click on one of the thumbnails to see large versions)