Hessentag & 3 Tage Marburg

In addition to the experimental part of the iGEM competition also the inclusion of the society plays an important role. The term 'synthetic biology' seems to be a category, most people never heard of. To make this part of biology accessible to people of every age and social background, we thought that the 'Hessentag' and '3 Tage Marburg' would represent perfect platforms.

The 'Hessentag' is arranged every year in a different city in Hessen and is place to show people the possibilites of working and living offered to inhabitants of Hessen. Next to several social events there is also a lot of space for scientific discussions. Questions as 'How does the climate change influence our life?' or 'Which chances and problems does the demographic alteration offer for a city?' were handled in several hands-on booths. In the scientific part, between Merck and several universities we used our booth to give interested children and adults room for discussion and the opportunity to take hands on synthetic biology. The method of DNA extraction out of paprika served as an example to simplify genetics and genetic engineering. In the second experiment, people were able to collect iron particles in cereals with a strong magnet. This experiment was used to build a bridge to our iGEM project. The experimentator was compared with a bacterium, that is able to collect the iron particles with its flagellum, which we designed. Both experiments included the possibilites to moderate their theoretical background depending on the age and knowledge of each person. The same was done at the biggest event in Marburg: '3 Tage Marburg'. With the guidance on postcards, every guest was able to reproduce the experiments. Therefore, we chose only experiments that included inexpensive ingredients and rapid methods. All in all, we were able to give insights in the fascinating world of synthetic biology to all visitors and interesting discussions led to the assumption that this new field of research is reaching public awareness slowly but is here to stay.