Blista: Seeing the world of science with different eyes

• Blista
• Visit at Blista
• World of microbiology
• Making movement audible
• Debate
• Taking the eye out of science

iGEM-Team Marburg meets Blista pupils

In one of our iGEM-meetings a discussion about different analysis techniques and the information that can be gained started. We came to the conclusion that for example the UV signal created from an HPLC run does not necessarily contain less information than a picture taken using a fluorescence microscope. Nevertheless due to the more abstract nature it seems to be less reliable than the actual picture which rather makes you feel like you can actually “see” the real facts. Thus we realized what high value and how reliable we estimate our visual experience to be. In a more general sense it is remarkable that even in a field of science like synthetic microbiology which subject of research is not directly accessible by our senses, the paradigm “true means visualisable” is still maintained. Due to the strong influence of this hypothesis on the way research is conducted we feel the need to question this hypothesis. Hence we wanted to create a “human practice” project that allows us to combine our aim of getting others interested in synthetic biology while at the same time consider the fundamental epistemological question of the relation between visual experience and knowledge of nature.

In Marburg there is the only school in Germany for visually impaired people where they can reach their Abitur, the final exam of secondary education in Germany. What is really impressive to see is how much their syllabus are just like that of any ordinary school. The pupils even get the chance to participate in practical courses as part of their biology or chemistry classes. Of course there are special safety precautions as they for example do all their experiments in a basin to avoid danger from spilled chemicals. Furthermore they use special equipment, e.g. an “optophone” that transforms a colour into sound so that the pupils can observe colourchanges.The school employs for these purposes specially trained teachers that teach only small courses of up to 12 pupils. This also means that they are able to individually support each pupil. Since these pupils do not rely on their visual experience as much as we do we were interested in finding out how they approach certain problems.

Visit at Blista

To get an impression of their daily lessons in school we supported them during their preparations for the Abitur exams and we visited some of their lessons. What we learned is that even if the pupils might be slower in some regards they learn basically in the same way as pupils do at an ordinary school. Obviously there are differences in the way things are taught as for example that there is no black board but everything is printed on a special printer in braille. Furthermore the pupils use their laptops much more as they have a device connected to them that in combination with a screen-reader software enables them to read texts displayed on their laptop. But it was interesting to see how critical they were towards the facts they were taught. They had many questions that they asked until they really understood instead of learning by heart. On the other hand we also wanted to draw their interest towards the field of synthetic biology. That iswhy we invited them to visit us in our lab to do some experiments. We started with a presentation as an introduction to the topic synthetic biology which already led to some discussions that indeed showed the great interest of the pupils in our work. Afterwards they did three experiments in small groups that cover basic topics of biochemistry. In this context they learned how to use a pipette and tried to find the mean error of them. Furthermore they learned about the necessity of sterile working and measured a growth curve of bacteria. While we had lunch together in our refectory the pupils asked how we use these techniques in our research. To conclude the day we introduced them to the iGEM competition and our project. The pupils were really interested and impressed by the possibilities synthetic biology offers. In our case especially by the capability to treat such a severe disease such as lung cancer.

Blista pupils reconnoitre the world of microbiology

A second visit of the pupils was dedicated to the microbiology. There was the opportunity of pouring agar-plates and an introduction on how organisms can be cultured using these plates. As an example the pupils could compare how many microorganisms are present on washed and unwashed hands. The pupils were especially interested in preparing the plates because they already learned before how they are used but never had the chance to actually see how they are made and used in practice. The last experiment dealt with safety aspects of microbiological working. The pupils should think of and got the opportunity to test different methods of sterilizing a liquid sample either by chemical or physical means for example using acids, bases or detergents. Afterwards some of the liquid was plated on LB-Agar plates and incubated over night at 30 °C in order to show which methods were successful. The pupils became aware of the responsibilities scientists have. In a discussion at the end of their visit we recognized that their opinion regarding synthetic biology was a very positive one contrary to our expectation. Although there is of course the danger of misuse still the possible advantages are predominant in their eyes. One girl told us she realized that she does not have to be afraid of bacteria when she saw a documentation on the possibilities of biotechnology and synthetic biology.

But the end of that day does not mean the end of this cooperation.

Making movement audible

During the preparation of the experiments for the Blista pupils the question how science could be made visible for visually impaired people was a constant companion. Hence we brood on a possibility to translate bacterial movement into an acoustic signal. A possible advantage of this could be that other information could be gained that have so far been overlooked. The transformation of movement into sound can be done using optical tweezers and dark field microscopy. The optical tweezers are used to keep the cell which movement is meant to be measured in the observed area. This is necessary because otherwise the cell would leave the observed area so quickly that no exact measurement would be possible. If only one LASER-beam is used to keep the cell in place, it can still move around this fixed point. This movement is recorded and if the cell’s displacement from its original orientation is plotted against time, a periodic function can be observed. The frequency of this function can then be interpreted as a sound.

Taking into account all that our work with the visually impaired pupils has shown us we learned that our visual impressions can lead us to believe that certain results are very reliable when more doubt would be necessary. Furthermore they can lead to misinterpretations that are deducted from our everyday experience even when it might not be applicable.