I have studied biochemistry in Tübingen and now I’m researching and teaching in molecular biology and genetics. My research topics are very deep and important ones. It’s life, going and death. But the Microorganism I’m investigating is baker’s yeast. Although we aren’t really interested in how old baker’s yeast can become, we use it as a model for human beings and yeast has many advantages.

This century is the century of microbiology, the last one was the century of physics and chemistry. We run out of national resources and microbiology can provide these resources. In the future Energy, plastic, gas or hydrogen gas, drugs will be produced with GMO’s. maybe even informatics tools will be driven by GMO’s. Because they are self-renewing, we just need some ions and sugar or light and it works. Working with Biology we have evolution on our site, we can modify the organisms in a way that they develop themselves better and otherwise we try to somehow counteract evolution, thinking of antibiotic resistances for example.

Great and innovative, basic experiments are very straight forward. Looking forward to seeing how it will transfer to the informatics part. There is a lot of potential in it. One chance I see, is Microorganisms are normally not bit like, they are normally not reacting yes or no. And a big chance is on modified response. Like when our liver gets a hormone which makes it produce some enzymes e.g. for digestion, not all cells react at the same time, some start earlier some start later, which is very important. I think there is a big chance that you can get temporary response in a way. Maybe there are some ideas on how to regulate the genes.

I don’t see any risks, the way you planned your experiment. Just one general potential risk, that maybe you expect too much too fast. Especially in gen technology, thinking of gene therapy it was predicted we will win against all genetically diseases plus cancer. And it does take longer than expected. You need the power of endurance. Since some parts take longer than expected.

If you really want to switch on and off, I think it will be sugars or other switching drugs, which give maximum responses. But maybe you can also think about specified organisms, maybe oxygen in the air for aerobic organisms, so maybe you can produce sensors for that and get a graduated response, as I said before, that not all the bacteria in the culture switch at one moment.

It’s a big problem. We are falling behind, since there is this mistrust in genes. If I see that things are labeled gene free, it has created a very bad atmosphere towards such a promising technology. As I said before I think the future lies in biotechnology and genetic modification. The funny thing is, that if you modify Organisms blindly by radiation or cross two species that’s nature and the result is good, but if a scientist takes a certain gene and puts it in it must be bad and it must be financiered by Monsanto. Another important thing to think about is why are there just big companies like Monsanto, which have monopoles in this field, because the laws and the controls are so strict that a small company has no chance to afford that. I was quite shocked when the amflora potato, which was intended to be used just for the production of glue was forbidden for Europe.

Established institute of molecular biotechnology at the TU graz, also involved in setting up the Austrian center for industrial biotechnology, at this stage already retired as a professor but still active in acib and still involved in projects of the Austrian center for industrial biotechnology

-Very well defined biological systems, in general very well characterized (sometimes in contrast to organism which have been derived by classical mutagenesis), good basis of understanding of these organisms, -We can generate really specific features of such organisms, we can define the biological capabilities of such organisms, we can design very specific Biosystems - the genetically modified organisms have a very important role in modern biotechnology, most bioprocesses wouldn’t work economically and technologically feasible without the use of GMO’s

In general, interesting topic, connecting Biosystems with robotic systems, such ideas have been on the wave for a longer time, but this is a very specific project, which directly try navigating a robot system by biological functions, so this is a very interesting line Potential to learn about basic behavior in such interfaces, you would also learn how to trigger a Biosystems to be exact enough to be able to provide signals for the robot system which are also well understood by the robot system

Not really see a potential risk, only if the biosystem directs the robot into a wall, but only for the robot itself (laughs).

There is already a very deep development in this area, I see a very big future for this combination, because we have already seen that the use of the features of Biosystems/biological systems can be very important in many, many areas, to provide new solutions which we might need in the future.

Safety guidelines are always an important issue, one of the main issues that during this time of about 40 years where genetically engineering is used no serious accident happened, where the use of gene technology was the reason for the accident. And the reason is that very early guidelines were developed for a safe use of the technology. If iGEM provides such technology, also have to provide the rules on how to use it. Because with technology you also have the problem that you can also enter areas where there are some risks and this of course also the case with genetically engineering.

I think the iGEM guidelines support a safe working area very much. Because of course if students don’t have a long experience, they don’t know which areas are risky and what areas can be handled in a safe manner. And such guidelines provide this information for the students. From this point of few I think it’s a very good set up, but on the other hand it’s important that young students learn to work with such techniques under safe conditions. So in combination with the proper guidelines there shouldn’t be a risk, that the students would work with wrong things.

Totally a great idea. On the one hand provides experience to young students, provides a lot of enthusiasm for the students and on the other hand, some ideas might also be suitable for further development in the future, e.g. for industrial approaches.

Future applications?

Combination of nanotechnology and biology, nano structes can also be put into biological systems Also, strong development in industrial technology, strong replacement of chemical processes by biological based processes, allows production of chemical products in a much let’s say cleaner way, environmentally friendly way, you can more precisely define the products

Well, my name is Karina Preis-Landl, I'm an assistant professor at the Institute of Molecular Biosciences, biochemistry and I'm a microbiologist from training, but just since my second postdoc time at the Institute of Biochemistry.

Genetically modified microorganisms are an important tool. So not only in science, but also in biotechnology and industry. Partly controversial, but the new generations will certainly evoke a change of consciousness. With this crispr cas system there will certainly be a big change. Extremely big potential.

Yes it was very exciting to read the project description, although I have never considered it from these points of view and it was actually the first point of contact that the processor can be practically replaced. It was above all a horizon extension for me. It was very exciting.

None, none at all So from the point of view of biological safety, I see no risk whatsoever behind it and I mean the organisms that are bred in it are, so to speak, pets and according to certain measures it is handled accordingly. It is a closed system so I would not associate any risks

So as you have described it is a huge opportunity, because you could practically extremely expand the computing power through parallelism. That's a huge potential when it works (laughs). Otherwise, I see a huge potential for microorganisms in connection with biotechnology or technology as a whole. If we remember that maybe we only know one percent of microorganisms that exist globally at the moment, there is still an inexhaustible potential. In my opinion, the greatest potential lies in the generation of alternative energies, since above all the conversion of solar energy, that is, the photosynthetically active microorganisms offer a very large potential, although there the development proceeds relatively slowly, but I think that has only something with investment to do. Too little investment in the field. And the second is that I believe that the problem of climate change will not be solved without microorganisms, without knowledge and without commitment. These are actually the two.

Yes, great possibility. If I were once again in your age I would use this possibility also.

No problem. Especially at your project what should go wrong? Nothing in my humble opinion.

No, I can answer that with a clear no. I can not believe it. I rather believe that this is a socio-political problem, that the world's hunger is related to the stabilization of economies and inequality in distribution, which, in my opinion, is still the main problem for hunger. What will be certain in the future is due to the climate change that certain areas of cultivation may be restricted and that the genetic engineering provides the opportunity to produce crops that can be successfully used, for example, in dry areas. Here I already see potential and a possibility. But that it actually wipes the hunger from the world, the genetically modified plants certainly not. I also believe that new generations are coming through the crispr cas system and the genome editing and I believe that this new generation will be accepted differently and used differently. Nevertheless, the problem of the world remains open, since the use of genetically modified plants gives rise to monopoly. This is again a socio-political and economic-political problem. This has little to do with technology and science. One can not solve the other now. It needs a social dialogue that brings this together and regulates it.

My name is Gabriele Berg and I come from Germany but I have been here for 12 years in the Austrian Chair for Environmental Biotechnology at Graz University of Technology. We are involved in our research with microbiomes, in a specific place or in a particular organism. We are investigating these things and on the other hand we are also trying to transfer new knowledge into application, like biotechnological applications make with the background of health, so either plants, humans or our environment to make healthier.

So if I am honest, then I would first think of: super for research, secondly quite difficult in the application and I would immediately encounter hurdles in the registry and as a third point I would gladly mention that it is of course an infinite natural Diversity of micro-organisms that we have only really understood and analyzed a very small percentage so far, and in this respect from the 25 years of research experience, my conclusion is that the diversity is the most important and I would rather look at whether I also in this natural variety would not find the potential.

I find this really extremely exciting and innovative. We ourselves try to do so, we try to connect the technique with the microbiome, with the microbiology. I believe that there is really an unimaginable potential that we cannot imagine, so I find it very good that you are dealing with it, even if it is now, so to speak, the interaction between a robot and a microorganism, but I find that is a very good and exciting application.

In principle, it is so that all we do is to carry risks and, of course, also such a project, so in this respect it is always important to weigh which risks are bigger or which risks are dangerous and I see here, of course, the robot could somehow have a problem and the genetically modified MO might leak, genetically engineered mo are not automatically dangerous. It depends strongly on which transgenes they carry, which promoters are in there, so that is actually a much more detailed evaluation necessary to meet here any statements. And there are also very many who are little risky and nature does it is always a major risk point also of transgenic organisms that the transgenic migrates from one organism to the other that makes nature permanent and which is perhaps a good example, we are all ourselves We carry 2 kg of MO in us, so it would be natural that the robot follows the Halobionten concept and carries MO in itself. However, I would tend here for more diversity.

Yes, very strong. In the last few years we have noticed that microbiomes are severely impoverished in their diversity, both in humans and in the high-performance animals and plants, so that a future field is surely the microbiome engineering and we also need the technology

Yes, I think it's great and I would like every student to participate. The study is often very tedious and you have to learn very much and is far from its later field of application, namely the right research and the sooner you get in touch with this research, the better it is to estimate whether you have selected the right one, gaining experience and seeing achievements, so I think that's a great thing.

Everyone is grown up, we teach that, so we also teach the risks and I think that everyone has to take on some responsibility in the course of his studies, at the latest with his Master's thesis and not just say that these are my results and they are statistically significant or not. So, there are always risks but I also think it's important to gain experience

The ultimate solution is certainly not, because there is no black and white here. I would imagine that it makes sense to travel far away in different regions or for different plants, but overall it is really important to preserve the diversity of our crops. We have a lot of cultivar adapted to the specific development conditions on the ground and personally I am worried that the developing countries in particular have the right seeds from the corresponding crops. For example, we have a project with Africa. It's all about healthy vegetables and you cannot imagine how difficult it was to organize vegetable seeds at all. We have other problems as well. Genetically modified MOs must always be considered in detail, who will use them, which property will be transferred Of course, much of this is herbicide tolerance now. So a detailed look is necessary. It certainly is not the ultimate solution.

My full name is Joshua Cherian Varughese, I am an electrical engineer by basic trait and I did my masters in mechatronics, so I got involved in robotics, came to the Artificial Life Lab in Graz to work on a project called SubCultron. We are making a swarm of robots to deploy in the Laguna of Venice to do some environmental monitoring and measurements which hopefully will lead to some more ecological policy changes.

I think it is really cool that an organism can interface or even control a robot. I think we will see massive changes of how a robot will look like. I think it’s a starting point and will hopefully end in a robot that becomes a useful robot in our day-to- day life.

Definitely, definitely, so right now in our robots we have space occupied for computational hardware, so I would imagine a microorganism to be micro, so it occupies less space and I would imagine a robot with a microorganism based controller to be much smaller than robots that we have today. So yes, I would definitely see potential applications.

I don’t really see a risk a such, but I see a challenge. We would have to change the way we think about controlling, programming, paradigms that we have laid down for sequential processing. Until now we use CPUs and maybe when we talk about parallel processing we use GPUs but we are still working very sequential.

Definitely! If I look at how architectures are changing, and we are slowly moving towards this more parallel processing structures. GPUs already have a more parallel processing structure, but this might be a paradigm shift where we cross the threshold to some kind of completely different architecture, if it is successfully implemented as a computer.

So, if we look at the past few years and look at which areas have benefited from the increasing parallel processing, I would say there are two main areas that come quickly to my mind: There is natural language processing and more widely known is computer vision or image processing. So I would expect that these fields would massively benefit from parallel processing. And talking about microorganism that can be used as computers – they might become +, for example, very, very good in understanding sounds: We are able to use google translate today because of convolutional neural networks that has gotten really good in understanding what we are speaking and any massively parallel system could implement a CNN to do the same things. So, I would expect these two fields to massively benefit from any massively parallel system.

Yes, if we can dream: If I have a very small, strong computer I can have an implant in my ear with a microphone and a speaker. If you then talk to me in German that processing unit can change that input signal into the language I understand and then I can speak back. That would be an application I could think of. If I want to do that today, I probably need a huge computer, at least in comparison to a microorganism based computer.

Yes, I guess the controversy comes from the term modified, people want to remain the way they are they don’t want anything modified. I do not think that we should stop progressing because of fears: I’m going to take the philosophical point of few that we have to improve, we have to develop things and hope that the right people be at the right places at the right time to take the right decisions. Of course we will need controls and do whatever is needed so it doesn’t end up in the wrong hands, but that doesn’t mean that we stop progressing in this direction.

When we heard about microwaves heating our food there were a lot of people going crazy saying that we will all die of cancer. But when we were actually starting using it, we actually saw that this is fine. That would be my approach, just do things that help people and then the society is going to understand. We always have, and we always have been growing over our natural inhibitions. And I think that genetically modified organism will make a huge difference and people are going to see it.

I’m a zoologist. I’m working here in the artificial life lab on the topics of bionics, bioinspired algorithms, interaction of artificial life forms e.g. robots and life forms e.g. honey bees. But also with fish and in the Colibot project also with micororganisms.

• Big potential for society, for industry to produce things, actually many GMO’s are already in use to produce substances in industrial areas
• Big discussion in public about GMO’s, if they are dangerous or not
• On the one hand, there is a big industry working with GMO’s on the other hand we do not fully understand what could happen, this is a field where I think that still research should be done,
• While working on the Colibot project I found out, that there are still open fields for GMO’S, where they can be used, this is what we at the moment do researching
• there should be an open discussion about GMO’S based on research/facts done by independent researchers

The general idea to use GMO’s to control technical entities opens new doors. The idea to control technical devises with GMO’S has from my point of view a lot of potential. But we are still at the beginning off finding out what this potential is. GMO’s are used for a lot of things now a days (to produce things….) but as far as I know, they are rarely used to communicate. This is a thing we would like to change. We would like to show that GMO’s are capable to communicate with other entities. We want to improve the existing way that GMO’S are used for communication. The idea behind is that we don’t only use GMO’s for production, we use them also for communication, e.g. tell a user about the status or tell a machine what to do, to solve problems with usually can only be solved in very expensive ways by classical entities. GMO’s have abilities that we miss in classical robots. E.g. they are very cheap to produce and reproduce, also regarding sensing they are able to detect substances and situations that are hardly detectable by detecting devices. We want to show that we can use GMO’s for more things than just production.

There is no new technology or no new machine you produce that is completely without risks. First of all, what we use here is a life form, even if they are very small, and life forms don’t react in a perfect determined way, they sometimes react different than you expect. The thing is if you need a perfectly determined system, that reacts in a perfect way, still the classical silicon chip is the better solution, but if you gave tolerance, than these kinds of processes are usable for you. The other thing discussed regarding MO’s is what happens if they get into the environment. The question is can these modifications jump from one life form to another and what happens if they jump. I wouldn’t expect that the MO’s do any harm if they get into the environment. I can imagine that they lose their abilities pretty fast if released. But therefore, we have restrictions we should keep to.

As mentioned before GMO’s as life forms have sensors for chemical substances, that go far beyond the technical sensors we use today. They are far better in detecting substances, the question is if we can manage an interface between GMO’s and machines that allows us to use e.g. E. Coli as a sensor for something. We can also use GMOs as controller devices, however a big problem is the speed of the reaction. Usually people say there is no chance that you can use bacteria as processing devices, as they have comparatively long cycle lengths. We would need new algorithms that can run on a CPU where thousands of single devices communicate to each other and calculate things. The real advantage might only show when we combine different kinds of bacteria and create a smart ecosystem of different GMOs. They might have different tasks, some might for example support or organize the others.

I don’t think that a microorganism based computer can replace our day-to-day computers. They are already established and proved themselves useful. But there are special operation areas where we would massive parallel systems.