Chlamy ↔ Public
Upcycling Workshop Humboldt University
Every year the Humboldt University Berlin organizes an event made for families to represent the huge spectrum of science and what science can do. This event is especially designed for participation and proof that science can be fun. For this day, we teamed up with the ecology group of our university. It was our aim to spread awareness to kids and their parents of plastic pollution and environmental pollution in general. Therefore we organized an upcycling workshop out of old plastic bags, presented families plastic-free alternatives to different products and performed a quiz about sustainability with the kids. In addition we showed our poster and talked with everyone who was interested about our project, genetic engineering and the possibilities of our algae.
Youth Education: Trash Collection
It’s not easy to get a grip on the scale off the plastic problem - that’s why we tried that literally as part of our educational outreach program. We had the chance to show a group of kids (aged 9 -16) what a large problem plastic poses for the forest ecosystem through collecting plastic waste right there. Together we collected a huge amount of plastic particles - ranging from bottles to wrapping and boxes. At the end of the day we had collected around seven bags of plastic litter and that wasn’t nearly everything - but our plea for a sustainable use of plastic found an open ear.
Long Night Of The Sciences
To close the gap between researchers and the public we participated at “The Long Night Of The Sciences” in Berlin. It is an event where institutions, museums, universities, startups and small projects open their doors to show and explain their work. Naturally, the algae we are working with, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, was in the spotlight that evening. Therefore we teamed up with several companies that already sell products that contain algae and offered them to the public, we offered a quiz about green algae, showed what Chlamydomonas reinhardtii looks like under the microscope and cultivated it in a big bioreactor.
During the night we talked about our vision, gave several lectures about iGEM and our project, answered lots of questions and tried to explain science in an easy and understandable way. And around 300 people joined us! It was a good way to learn how to present our ideas as simply as possible. Additionally it was a great lesson on how interested people from various backgrounds are in solution-aimed genetic approaches but also about their reservations and safety issues when it comes to genetically altered organisms.
iGEM Internship
One direct pay-off of our efforts to communicate our visions at the Long Night of Sciences was an application for an internship at our project - and we were happy to fulfill this wish! For three weeks we were joined by Prisca, read her description of her time with us below:
“During an three week lab internship at the iGEM lab, I was able to help conducting the experiments and I got to see many devices in action like e.g. the confocal microscope. They taught me basic biological working techniques shared their aims and considerations and opened my eyes for the networking behind. Besides the inside view of the project with its challenges, I learned more in the field of synthetic biology, especially the implementation of theory into practice. The newly gained experience made me think differently about actual debates going on about genetical engineering, because as a layman I underestimated the power and also the complexity of it. In general, the biology skills will help me in my future to combine chemistry and biology.” Prisca Weider, Bachelor student (chemistry)
TV report about “Chlamylicious”
A team of TV reporters (rbb) paid our team a visit to produce a television contribution about our project in their daily news-magazine “Zibb”. They interviewed us as a group and one of our PIs separately, asked a whole lot of questions about our project and accompanied us throughout an entire day of our lab work. The resulting short film presented the problematic of microplastics in the water ecosystems, explained our idea and strategy of using algae to degrade PET in the framework of the iGEM competition and showed us performing basic biotechnological methods. We were very delighted with having our very own program on the local TV program and hope to have reached a broader audience, which would otherwise not have heard about the possible benefits of genetic engineering.
Interview about “Chlamylicious”
In the early beginnings of our project we talked to Timo Enderle. As a studied biologist he now consults companies with a focus on biotechnology. Moreover he runs a blog and website about algae and algae news, called “AlgaeObserver”. We talked with him several times and agreed to give an interview which he then posted on his website, his blog and on his social media accounts. This is how we were able to reach people in the algae community and others interested in algae. Moreover Timo gave us valuable advice on how to act on social media platforms and indicated some companies in Germany that work with algae as well and that could cooperate (MINT, Sea & Sun Technology, Jörg Ullmann) with us. In the context of our interview we were able to talk about the possibilities of algae, the future potential of our project and the scope of synthetic biology.
Panel discussion about genetic engineering
Throughout our human practice projects we more and more discovered that there are still lots of open questions considering GMOs, synthetic biology and genetic engineering. So for our last event we decided to organize and host a panel discussion. Therefore we managed to invite five experts, from NGOs, universities and companies that talked with us about the issues and concerns of this wide topic. This event was open to everybody, and we advertised it not only at our university, but also requested that friends and colleagues join this event. This is how we managed to not only talk to the public about science, as we did in the projects before, but with actors and stake holders in science. To make things easy we first introduced iGEM, our project and the legislation of GMOs, followed by the actual panel discussion. Afterwards, we invited everyone for a get-together and were able to talk about the discussion.
Startnext Crowdfunding
Over the course of the iGEM season, we referred to different sources for funding of our project. We set up a crowdfunding campaign on the platform Startnext where we hoped to reach a broad audience interested in supporting emerging scientists interested in solving the plastic pollution crisis. To inform the public, we animated a video describing the working mechanism of our design. One of our most resourceful sponsors visited our laboratories and talked about innovation from his perspective as an experienced company manager and advisor. Many other sponsors encouraged us to widen our scope by asking questions about the practicability of our intended use-case.
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