The next generation of synthetic probiotics

Tims year, when we decided on our iGEM project, one of our main focuses was that it should be well integrated with our human practice projects. Because our project involves GM food which is a topic that raises many ethical and safety issues we wanted to find out what the public knew and to create a broad debate on the subject. We wanted to do a project that was not only engaging for us students, but also something that could engage people in general. We think we have had great succes on this matter. Our first step was to create something concrete that could illustrate our vision. To achieve this we created a concept product in the form of a yoghurt that would contain our modified bacteria. With this, we could start debates and inform people about synthetic biology. We have been suprised by the interest people have shown for a our project. We have been seen on television, people have followed us on facebook and we arranged a very well attended SynBioDay with over 200 participants.