According to our survey, our audience shows a nearly perfectly balanced gender distribution (51% feamle, 49% male). The average test person was 23.7 years old, whereas women were slightly older than men (24.2 years compared to 23.3 years old). Pleasingly, we were able to reach nearly all ages: The youngest participants were 14 years old, the oldest a 72 years old gentleman. As one would expect, the distribution of degrees corresponded well with the average ages. The majority of our guests held a high school degree (60.0%, of these are 48.5% males, 51.5% are female). This is followed by the bachelor degree (20%) and the secondary school certificate ("middle school", 9.1%). Only a minority held a master degree or a PhD (both 5.4%).

By first established a common language and common basic knowledge on synthetic biology, we aimed to enable everyone in the audience to fully understand the science and the conceptof synthetic biology. Following our talk evening, the audience was asked to estimate their knowledge on synthetic biology. 91% of the test group could define the term with great (32.7%) or intermediate (58.2%) certainty. Only 9% were more (5.4%) or very (3.6%) uncertain. These numbers mirror the great success of our talk evening on educating the public. Yet of course, the test group was not chosen randomly, but consisted of people who actively and intentionally attended a talk evening on the matter. Therefore, our data is most probably not representative and the high state of information also due to previous knowledge. According to the Eurobarometer 2010 presented by Reinhard Heil from the Institute for Technology Assessment and System Analysis at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, only 18% of the european public have heard of synthetic biology. Of these, only a fraction could define the term.

Following our talk evening, we captured what our audience associates with synthetic biology by asking them to chose from the options "Genetic Engineering", "Bioengineering", "Pharmaceutical Research", "Modeling", "Basic Research", "Biological Weapons", "Food", "Environmentalism", "Alternative Energies", "Killer Viruses", "Playing God" or else.

Most people chose scientific options like "Genetic Engineering" (78.2%), "Bioengineering" (67.3%) or "Pharmaceutical Research" (61.8%) and "Modeling" (56.4%), which have indefinite connotations (shown in blue). Especially "Genetic Engineering" can be interpreted as criticism considering past public debates genetic engineering in Germany. Since we explicitly defined synthetic biology as extended genetic engineering, the high number of selections is most probably attributed to this. "Pharmaceutical Research" however indicated the great hope people place in synthetic biology especially regarding yet uncurable diseases. The emphasis of the biomedical potential is less surprising, since the research in Heidelberg is clearly focused on medical fields and the local public is thus biased. Moreover, we pointed out the advantages our project could offer for drug research.

Clearly negative terms like "Biological Weapons" (43.6%), "Killer Viruses" (25.4%) and "Playing God" (20%) (shown in red) were selected by an unexpected high number of people. As layed out before, our audience actively and intentionally attended a talk evening on the potenial of synthetic biology. Many guests were also invited by the Secular Humanists Rhein Neckar, a group of critical minds who meet regularly to discuss current issues. Therefore, they are most likely also sceptical towards potential hazards of a powerful technology like synthetic biology. In contrast to that, nearly half of the participants associated aspects such as "Environmentalism" (36.4%) and "Alternative Energies" (34.5%) (shown in green). Moreover, 43.6% ot the participants associate synthetic biology with "food", most liekely due to the petri dish burger discussed by the author Olaf Fritsche.