Open house day @ Faculty of Bioscience Engineering Ghent University

Survey and flyer

We wondered what the man in the street thinks and knows about synthetic biology and some aspects of our project. Therefore, we went on the street and approached people with a few questions. Our ‘field of action’ was the Gentse Feesten by day. The Gentse Feesten are a 10 day long free music festival in the centre of Ghent which attracts a very various public of every age. Many people were willing to help us and were very interested in the extra information we gave them about iGEM, synthetic biology and our project. We also gave them flyers they could read at home.

Flyer (Dutch)

After some general questions (age, sex and occupation), we wanted to know three more things:

Do you worry about increasing antibiotic resistance in bacteria?
Do you think bacteria can be useful for man?
What is the first thing you think about when you hear ‘genetically modified organisms’?

Our general conclusion is that the bigger part of people worries about increasing antibiotic resistance and that almost everyone thinks bacteria can be useful for us. The last question, however, had a much more varying response. We were surprised about how often we got the answer ‘nothing’. Other popular answers were about corn, soy and other food.