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From 2011.igem.org

Public Presence

A big part of synthetic biology is all about being aware of how the science is being perceived by the public. For example, it is important for us to be aware of whether our project is seen as interesting, confusing or even frightening to members of the public without scientific training. Based on feedback we can then convey information in an accessible manner, that can develop interest, expand understanding or allay fears as necessary.

Throughout our project we maintained a twitter account, regular video-logs (which are available on youtube) and one member of our team has been keeping an honest blog on the Life Sciences of Scotland website about her experiences with iGEM.

We also maintained a stop-motion camera operating in the lab. This was partly for allowing people to keep track of what we'd been up to during the day; and also partly because it's incredibly fun to watch a sped up version of yourself tearing around a lab - performing science at break-neck speed, whilst still observing all the safety protocols!

Another thing to keep in mind is that public presence is not just for the benefit of the general public. Through use of directed feedback, it also has some genuine implications for keeping a project relevant, ideas for future applications cohesive and a beleaguered iGEM team motivated!

To that end, we've undertaken a number of different approaches to establish contact between ourselves and parties that we believe might have a vested interest in our final product. These include questionnaires sent to several companies - including NASA and our attendance at a University open day. Attendance at the open day generated feedback from new scientists about our project, including how accessible they found the research and any potential uses they thought it could have.

Public outreach

Click the icons below to visit our Twitter and Youtube accounts, as well as Ellin's blog. A summary of all our video logs can be found on our Team Diary page.

Check out our Twitter feed for date specific information on our successes and our 'almost-but-not-quite' successes of the project.

Interested in a personal video log of each week of the project? Each of the 9 recorded weeks were summarised by a different team member.

Interested in seeing the weekly changes in an iGEMer? Why not take a look at Ellin's personal blog on the Life-Sciences of Scotland website.

Live-lab

We recorded a time-lapse video every day at the lab. This one sums up all of Week 3. This way, everyone can have a look at what working in a synthetic biology laboratory is really like, though we are of course working so fast that the naked eye can hardly see!

Letters to companies

As we began to see different methods for putting our project to use in industry it seemed like a good idea to get in contact with the individuals already in those industries and have them gauge how ground-breaking our new ideas would be.

Some of the application ideas we had for our project included:

Creation of medicinal products in extreme environments:

As light is an ubiquitous resource, it makes sense to have light-controlled machinery inside bacteria. This would mean that creation of desired products - such as medicines or enzymes - wouldn't require the expensive transport of chemicals to trigger these responses. This is particularly relevant in places such as space, where transport of any material is extremely expensive. Imagine bringing a small vial of bacteria up in a rocket and having it self-assemble into a complex piece of machinery by simply adding re-cycled growth media and light!

Micro-engineering:

Through target-specific encapsulation and dispersal machinery, partially permeable biofilm could be formed into areas which allow either a rapid or slow movement of fluids through them at specific points. On top of this, any individual bacteria in the formed matrix could be triggered to produce a specific chemical or enzyme at any time allowing formation of a microscopic chemical engineering production line. We have performed modelling on the diffusion gradients of all our biobricks to generate approximate applicable resolutions.

Industrial Cleaning of Bio-reactors:

Biofilm formation is a constant menace in large-scale biotechnology, where bacteria left resting in a reactor form a biofilm which resists conventional cleaning methods. They also reduce reactor lifespan through corrosion and reduces reaction efficiency by insulating heat or absorbing nutrients. We have created several biobricks which trigger biofilm dispersal. By joining these to a specifically active promoter - either a light, chemically, or temperature activated promoter - and inserting them into the bacterial machinery. Once the bio-reaction is completed, the tank can be treated in such a manner that the biofilm dispersal mechanisms become active - thus eliminating the biofilm and increasing the profitability of the Biotechnology industry.

LETTER!

Feedback (?)

University Open Day

Our iGEM team attended a University Open Day on the 7th of September for potential students who were considering studying at Glasgow University. As a project group of undergraduate students, we were asked by the Life Sciences school if we would like to attend and share our iGEM experiences and opinions of the University in general. This gave us an excellent opportunity to interact with an unique group of individuals - members of the public who had a specific interest in life-sciences but did not have significant training beyond that available at a high-school level.

We created a poster with a broad summary of our project and manned it throughout the day, whilst a steady torrent of prospective students asked us questions about iGEM and University life in general. We received a number of questions and were challenged on a variety of aspects of the project, such as how each of the parts worked or what their function would be in something like industry.

Through explaining the project to a variety of people we became far more aware of areas in the project which were difficult to understand or didn't gel together well. As a result of this, we were able to change the ideas we put forward to explain what we were doing and even came up with a couple of new concepts for application of the project itself!

Overall, our attendance at the Open Day was a great success: it gave us a dry-run practice for the upcoming Jamboree, it allowed us to see our project through other people's eyes and, best of all, we had a fantastic day!

Here's our poster which we were presenting during that event:

Add pictures of our lovely day and prettyful poster