Team:Marburg/Collaborations/Thrace

Erasmus+ & Science Communication

Introduction

Raising the topic of synthetic biology, and especially about plant synthetic biology is somewhat of an uphill battle in Germany, a country where the public opinion of genetic engineering in agriculture is a very negative one. In fact, 81% of the population agrees with a complete ban on genetically modified crops1. This fear of biotechnology - much like most fears - has its roots on a misunderstanding of the science behind it. Therefore, it was clear to the team from the very beginning that science communication about this topic would play a big role in the months to come.

Working in publicly funded universities and research institutes means that our research also belongs to the public, and we share the responsibility to communicate it to them. However, this is easier said than done, especially for people accustomed to using unambiguous, dry and technical language in their work.

Participating in the Erasmus+ Programme were members from many teams. We spent the week in the Municipal Camping in the city of Alexandroupolis.

Communicating Science to non-Scientists

Addressing this issue was the main topic of the Erasmus+ Programme "Communicating Science to non-Scientists" hosted by the IGEM Thrace team in their home city of Alexandroupolis, in Greece. There was a big focus on "non-typical" forms of science communication - that is - theater, dance, visual arts and music. The program brought iGEMers from all over Europe to the lovely city of Alexandroupolis for 10 days to learn more about science communication and, at the end of the week, to create a performance that communicated science topics like climate change, vaccination and synthetic biology to an open audience.

Our team member Yasoo flew to Alexandroupolis to represent the OpenPlast team, he shared his experience participating in the Erasmus+ Programme:

"The language barrier was of course the biggest challenge - how are you supposed to communicate complex and nuanced science issues without speaking greek? - so we had to really try and come up with a visual way to show it. Between the 8 of us responsible for doing a performance about synthetic biology, only 2 spoke greek. And this is where the non-typical form of communication came in, we relied on dancing and acting to convey the emotion and show what we would otherwise have to explain. To talk about synthetic biology for example, we had a short play about a 'Mad Scientist' that talks to a little girl about how you can use synthetic biology to create lettuce that has the genes to synthesize the Vanillin molecule: the compound responsible for the vanilla flavour. Meanwhile, the others would play the part of genes and DNA moving around to show how metabolic engineering works and illustrate the narration. The main goal was to teach what we see as the essence of synthetic biology: to gather parts from different organisms and combine them to make something new; And I hope we managed to show everybody in a fun and uncomplicated way how synthetic biologists think."

The Erasmus programme is an initiative financed by the European Union to promote exchange programmes for students in European universities to countries all around the world.

The group presented a performance to communicate the principles of synthetic biology to an audience of families and children.
During the iGEM-Bielefeld visit, we went together to the Fridays for Future protest, there we distributed flyers and engaged people in the street.

Spreding the work

Following the programme in Greece, teams came back to apply what they learned back home. The iGEMers from Germany teamed up to raise awareness about climate issues in several cities. We participated in the Fridays for Future protests and engaged with people in the street, distributing flyers and discussing topics related to the climate crisis.