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 made for participating and to show 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 about plastic pollution and environmental pollution in general. Therefore we organized an upcycling workshop out of old bags, presented families plastic-free alternatives to different products and did 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 public we participated at “The Long Night Of The Sciences” in Berlin. It’s an event where institutes, museums, universities, startups and small projects open their doors to show their work and explain what they do. 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, 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 simple as possible. Additionally it was a great lesson on how interested people from various backgrounds are in solution-aimed genetic approaches but also 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 teached 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 new gained experience made me think different about actual debates going on about genetical engineering, because as a layman I underestimated the power and also the complexity of it. In generally 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 microplastic in 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 contribution on the local TV program and hope to have reached a broader audience, who else would 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, calles “AlgaeObserver”. We talked several times and agreed about an interview 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 everyone who is interested in algae. Moreover he 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 could cooperate (MINT, Sea & Sun Technology, Jörg Ullmann) with us. In the context of our interview we were able to talk about possibilities of algae, 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 when it comes to 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. the event was open for everybody and we advertised it not our only at unis, but also told friends and colleagues to join. This is how we managed to not only talk with people about science, as we did in the projects before, but with actors and stake holders of science. To make things easy we first introduced iGEM and our project followed by the actual panel discussion. Afterwards we invited everyone for a get together and were able to talk about the discussion.