Team:Heidelberg/Outreach

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                  <div id="expert"  class="box" data-name="Experts" data-desc="We talked to [http://www.dkfz.de/de/f030/groups/zawatzky/ Prof. Dr. Rainer Zawatzky], who is <b>group leader and safety representative at the [http://www.dkfz.de/en/index.html German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)]</b> as well as <b>deputy chairman of the regional office of the [http://www.bund.net/ueber_uns/bund_in_english/ BUND]</b> (a German NGO for preservation of the environment) not only for safety concerns, but also majorly for receiving input from a scientific expert. The discussion we engaged in mainly dealt with three topics: Impacts of synthetic biology in general (and our project in particular) on the environment, synthetic biology as a risk-technology and sustainability, as we intend to provide an energy-efficient alternative to classical gold-recycling.

We received first input concerning the communication of our project and our software to the general public. Prof. Zawatzky pointed out that possible concerns of the public regarding our project are negligible – at least for the planning of our project. In his long experience as researcher, he often experienced anxiety of non-scientists and doubts the effectiveness of advances in Human Practice, as discussions with concerned people may not lead to the expected result. However, we believe that it is in fact possible to address and to banish fears by informing society about one’s work and by promoting communication between science and the society.

With Mrs. Van Aaken, who not only is a <b>pedagogue for environmental education</b>, but also <b>member of the BUND</b>, we talked about the impact of synthetic biology on environment and on our lives in general. We cannot foresee all consequences and the impact our actions will have for the future – which accounts for both, the interactions of our “creations” with different ecosystems as well as the impacts of synthetic food or medicine on our bodies. The evaluation of possible risks arising from them has to be done according to the specific use of the synthetic product. Furthermore, we should return to our essential needs instead of the urge to pile up cheap goods and wealth at the expense of nature and the poor.

Besides this general issue, we also considered the question whether synthetic biology is an artificial process or rather something natural. When interacting with society in general (see below), a common association to synthetic biology was “artificial”. However, we can ask whether synthetic biology actually is human-made artificial or accelerated natural evolution. Addressing these questions in the discussion round with Mrs. Van Aaken lead us further in the very theory behind science in general, hence, what natural sciences really are, what nature is and whether our quest for knowledge and technological advance is part of human nature. These considerations opened up an entirely new point of view on what we as learning scientists were doing and hence, we thank Mrs. Van Aaken for opening up our horizon during this enlightening afternoon.

Seeing safety concerns as one of the major issues in a Human Practice Advance, we wanted to gain a deeper knowledge on , what professional bio-safety defense looks like. We arranged to take part in an <b>ABC-defense</b> training (i.e. atomic, biological and chemical weapon defense) organized by the <b>German Armed Forces</b> .. Especially the part about biological weapons was of special interest for us, as many people we talked to pointed out safety concerns as one of their major fears regarding synthetic biology Hence, we wanted to know, how experts in bio-safety approach these issues. Read about our [[Biosafety | experiences]]!

Additionally, as we try to improve the efficiency of gold-recycling, we concluded that we should gain an understanding of the current methods to recover gold and discuss the potential of our gold recovery approach with experts in this field .Hence, we set up a visit of a delegation of our team to the <b>gold-recycling company</b> [http://tbm-edelmetallrecycling.net/ TBM Edelmetall Recycling]. This visit will take place in October, as they are working short time over the summer.

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We started our presentation with the <b>Life-/Live-Experiment</b>: We distributed questionnaires with three different questions. Before the main part of our talk, the audience was asked to answer only question 1, which was either “What is synthetic biology?” or “What do you think synthetic biology is?” – each person could decide which one accounts better to his or her knowledge on synthetic biology. In our talk, we first gave a brief introduction to synthetic biology. Later, we explained the concept and some projects of the iGEM competition and elaborated further on “The Philosopher’s stone” – our own project. Finally, we gave our personal conclusion and outlook on our future with synthetic biology, i.e. opportunities and risks when implementing synthetic biology further into our lives. Before offering time for questions, we ended our presentation with the second part of our Life-/Live-Experiment. The latter two questions were: “What do you associate with synthetic biology?” and “Which questions remained unanswered?”. Here, we did not want to know, if the audience had listened to what we were presenting, but rather in what way the presentation had changed or broadened their opinion on synthetic biology. We intended to stimulate the communication between “science” and “the public”, but in order to do so, a certain level of abstraction has to be reached in order to allow proper discussion. Receiving this feedback from the audience helped us to improve our way of presenting the project.

After our talk, many questions were addressed, concerning both the principles of synthetic biology in general and the ones of NRPS in particular. However, the vast majority of questions was not about understanding the biology behind “The Philosopher’s Stone”, but rather about the potential of synthetic biology and the concerns our audience had. Hence, the discussions following the presentations were highly interesting and offered valuable input for us, as we could feel that the major concerns of people are based on the fact that synthetic biology, for them, is a black-box. Our task as young researchers is to bring light to the darkness, open the box and show society that synthetic biology – strongly abstracted – is building, not playing, with building bricks.

When [[Live Experiment Short Talks | analyzing our little experiment]], the most striking result was that people who had stated that they did not have any idea what synthetic biology is exactly before our talk, wrote down “open questions” at a decent scientific level. This and the feedback some people gave us directly, tells us, that they understood the main ideas of our project.

Furthermore, we were invited to the <b>[http://www.gbs-rhein-neckar.de/ secular humanists]</b>, a group of critical minds with a broad range of interests, such as ethics, philosophy, politics, natural sciences, who meet and discuss current issues concerning these topics. Their clear focus is ethics, as many of them are philosophers, however, there are natural scientist, economists and linguists as well. This mix of characters, approaches and expertise made it both challenging to present the project appropriately (i.e. on a suitable level of abstraction) and highly interesting and valuable for a discussion. After our 1-hour long talk, interrupted by first questions, we entered another 2 hours of discussion with the entire audience. Everyone was eager to ask explanatory to drilling questions and to give their opinion. The range of questions was, as indicated earlier, quite broad, reaching from “What exactly is the <i>sense</i> of your project?” to “Is synthetic biology at all controllable? If something has economic value, people won’t be able to control it, right?”.

We also performed our Life-/Live-Experiment with the secular humanists, and when [[Live Experiment Secular Humanists | analyzing]] the feedback forms, it was clear that we had talked to philosophers: questions like <b>“Is there anyone (or any institution) who has the authority to set the boarders (i.e. when going far is going too far)?”<b> or </b>"Isn't synthetic biology somehow a second industrial revolution? Only that the steam engines we're building have the ability to change when we`re turning our backs on them?" remained unanswered.">

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                    <div id="young" class="box" data-name="The young generation" data-desc="Thirdly, we wish to involve the young generation to a special extent, as they are the <b>future of this society and future scientists</b>. Our project is designed to provide a sustainable alternative to classical gold recovery; hence it affects especially next generations. We therefore wanted to know what high school students think about our project and how they imagined the future if our project was to be realized. We organized an essay competition where students from the [https://www.life-science-lab.org/cms/ Life Science Lab Heidelberg] at the DKFZ (German Cancer Research Center) could participate and hand in essays dealing with the consequences and implications of bacteria-facilitated gold recovery for either society and politics, economy and industry, the environment or on an individual level. We selected the best-written essays and invited the respective authors for a tour in our lab.<br/>

We are grateful for the input we received as the different aspects and target groups were covered byin the individual essays. The essay one that, to our minds, describinges these far-reaching consequences best was submitted by [[Essay Isabel Marleen Pötzsch | Isabel Marleen Pötzsch]].

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                     <div id="art" class="box" data-name="Artists in the science world" data-desc="Fourthly, we built up a cooperation with the artists participating in the joint project <b>[http://notinventedbynature.org/  “not invented by nature”] </b> by the [https://www.dkfz.de/en/index.html DKFZ], the [http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/index_e.html Heidelberg University], the [https://www.life-science-lab.org/cms/ Heidelberger Life Science Lab] as well as the [http://www.uni-weimar.de/en/university/start/ Bauhaus University Weimar]. <b>One may ask what art and synthetic biology have in common.</b> To answer this question is the very aim of this cooperation. The visiting artists were introduced to basic methods in synthetic biology such as working with bacteria and mammalian cells, cloning DNA, protein expression and analytical evaluation of their results by e.g. microscopy and gel-electrophoresis. After an introductory lab-course, they plan to work in our lab, gain experiences and working on their exhibits. Discussion rounds and mutual presentations accompany this collaboration.

We thank the international group of artists, participating in this project: <b>[http://c-lab.co.uk/home.html Howard Boland], [http://www.johoffmann.com/ Joanna Hoffmann-Dietrich], [http://jihyunpark.org/ Ji Hyun Park] and [http://www.santosmiguel.com/Site/Welcome.html Miguel Santos] for their philosophical and creative input</b> and a completely new point of view on synthetic biology which itself can be regarded as artistic: Out of existing small pieces, one creates something synthetic, thus entirely new. This would also implicate that in every project in synthetic biology one can find a piece of its scientific creator, which is, after all, a soothing thought.

Read about [[Joanna Hoffmann-Dietrich's experience and adaptation| Joanna Hoffmann-Dietrich's experience and adaptation]] of our project.

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