Science Picnic!

This year our IGEM team Warsaw took part in - Piknik naukowy (a science fair). This event takes place every year and it’s aim is to invite different students, researchers, and teachers to present the Topic of they’re interest which they are passionate about. It is an amazing opportunity for everyone to come and listen to talks, see experiments, watch educational movies and learn something new. This science fair is free for everyone who will find the time to attend to this week end event! That is why we participated in Piknik naukowy,not only it is free so that everyone can be present, but it is an opportunity for us as students interested in synthetic biology to present the field we are passionate about. We also got the chance to observe the reactions of different persons we encountered. Not only small children aged from 5 to 12 were present but also elder children, as well as parents that were very interested in our display (sometimes even more than they’re children).

This year the picnic main subject was - Life. That is why we decided to present the basic compounds of bacteria (Escherichia coli) through a puzzle that we made to illustrate how this small organism can live and why it is so important for us - human beings...

To show that bacteria, not only are occurring naturally in our surroundings but that they can also be modified with different techniques to acquire different functions that are needed (-like producing insulin). We chose to show to our wide audience E. coli that was expressing green fluorescent protein to explain how Genetically Modified Bacteria help our everyday life and why this model organism is so important. To illustrate to our youngest audience the need for model organisms in our laboratories we displayed also modified Danio rerio explaining the meaning of those animals to us.

We were surprised by the range of different opinions as we presented Genetically Modified Organisms, explaining they’re acquired functions and it was very interesting for us to listen to people’s fears concerning GMO’s and the explanation of that feeling to us. This was especially important for us preparing ourselves for the small “documentary” we were about to shoot for this year’s Human Practice as it gave us an overlook of questions that we might ask to random people on the street. It also showed to us that we (as people that are somehow involved in science) don’t communicate enough with the audience. During this event we understood that we very often use a language that is too complicated for people, not familiar with the subject to understand what we want to explain... This kind of situations lead to misunderstanding of some scientific facts that are obvious for the people that are working in laboratories. This is why we want especially to communicate with different people about Synthetic Biology, Genetically Modified Organisms as well as Genetic Engineering itself. That is one of the reasons that one of our team member is preparing a conference about GMO’s with the Student Genetics and Epigenetics Society.

But let’s talk about numbers!!!

• People that were present during the picnic day: 140 000

• People that visited our area:4000

• Students referring: 6

• of hours that each of us stayed at our display referring:

-8h (talking)

-(12 h counting the preparations the exact same day!)

• Percentage of happy people referring: 100%!

This was a very rewarding experience for us all! If You come by Warsaw at the right time come have a look at this Picnic because it is a fantastic experience to learn something new!!!

More pictures below: