Public Engagement
Here is described all the people we talked to!
European Meetup iGEM Delft - 6 July
The European iGEM meet up for the Netherlands was held in Delft this year. The meet up started with a talk by Cees Dekker, a well known physicist. It was quite interesting to hear about the common ground between physics and biology in his talk.
After the break we had the talk from Denis Murphy, he is highly involved in palm oil. Palm oil is used a lot for cosmetics in richer countries, and for sustenance in poorer countries. He expanded on a specific application for genetic engineering for making sustainable palm oil plantations.
The main event of the day was of course the poster presentations of all the iGEM teams themselves. We walked around a lot, talking to pretty much every team at least once. It was very nice to see all the Dutch teams again here after we had met them during the Dutch iGEM meet up in Wageningen. During all this we handed out our 3D printed phages to the teams too.
The last part of the day was a BBQ with some drinks. We left together with some of the other teams and talked more about how our respective projects were going.
Ferdinand Van Der Graaf - 30 August
We met with Ferdinand van der Graaf to discus the game we are designing about synthetic biology safety. He works as a researcher at the UMCG hospital, as well as a teacher at a local highscool. In his teachings he uses a lot of educational games, and had previously designed a game to teach about natural selection. We talked about how to implement game elements in a balanced way while not giving up too much learning elements. Furthermore he recommended to stick to tried and true game elements that work, something we found to be true too.
Maakfestival - INPUT DATE
This years’ Maakfestival was held at the Groninger Forum and provided Dutch manufactures – in the broadest sense – who are living in the north of the Netherlands with the opportunity to excite teens about diverse technical projects. We had our own iGEM booth with various attributes from the laboratory, such as (properly sealed) Escherichia coli bacteria with Green Fluorescent Protein and talked about synthetic bacteria to interested people from every age group. Participants were invited to write their own opinion on bacteria, ranging from ‘cute’ to ‘useful’. Besides that Joana gave a short talk about iGEM and synthetic biology in one of the ‘maker talks’. Sometimes, we were even surprised what some children already knew about bacteria. In the end we were really excited to introduce others to the fascinating world of synthetic biology.
NBC - 16 May
On Tuesday the 16th of May 2017 the 17th edition of the Netherlands Biotechnology Conference (NBC-17) was organized by the Dutch Biotechnology Association (NBV). During this day, 135 professionals and students working in the biotechnology work field were connected to each other and informed during several interactive sessions and keynotes about the latest developments in their work field. Here, we gave a pitch about this years’ Groningen iGEM project and were allowed to present our poster together with other Dutch iGEM teams!
Benelux Meetup - INPUT DATE
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KIVI Lecture - INPUT DATE
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Richel Bilderbeek - INPUT DATE
We contacted Richel Bilderbeek to give us some tips about preparing lessons for children from 10 to 12 years old. He is highly experienced in educating 7 till 18 year-olds.
We are working together with the Scholieren Academie to educate kids. The general goal is informing the kids about the university. What do students do? What am I, a molecular biology student, doing in a laboratory?
The Scholieren Academie wants to start this project, because research has shown that kids from the eastern part of the province Groningen, choose less for higher education. By starting really early with informing these kids about the possibilities of the university, the Scholieren Academie hopes that children will choose more often for higher education after primary school.
We went to some schools to give a guest lecture. A few days later, the children came to the lab to do some experiments themselves.
LAB Egmond aan Zee - 28 August
We attended the 12th LAB Symposium in Egmond aan Zee on the 28th of August. This is a yearly one week event about Lactic Acid Bacteria. Thanks to the organising committee we were able to attend the symposium for one day with three people of the team. This was a really great experience. It gave us the opportunity to present our poster during the poster sessions and to talk to researchers who are specialized in working with CRISPR-Cas, bacteriophages and Lactococcus lactis.
GBB Symposium - INPUT DATE
The Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute (GBB) is the centre for biomolecular sciences at the University of Groningen. We were invited to give a presentation of our project and show our poster in the poster sessions. During the event we got the opportunity to explain our project to other researchers from the university.
J. Hille - INPUT DATE
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Wouter Ghering - INPUT DATE
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Rob Duba - INPUT DATE
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Jeantine Lunshof - INPUT DATE
Jeantine Lunshof works as a bioethicist at the Church laboratory in Boston. We contacted her in the beginning of our project to get a general view on ethics in the field of synthetic biology. After explaining the general idea of our project, she told us something about her work at the Church lab. Together we thought about a story which would be interesting for the public and would not scare them of.
Jeantine also mentioned that the consumer of dairy products is in our case a very low stakeholder. This definitely does not mean we should set them aside. It is important to inform them and think about the story you will tell them. Why is our project important for the consumer? Does it ensure better/safer dairy products or will the dairy products be of a higher quality?
The most important and helpful thing she told us was to make clear at all cases that our diagnostic tool will not get into the food! Only one small mentioning of this of one of the team members could make the headlines and break your story. Possibly the team’s project would only get remembered by the negative attention it got. Ultimately, chances of getting the product on the market would be close to zero. Tip: one team, one voice!
Siger - INPUT DATE
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Simon van der Els, NIZO - INPUT DATE
Simon van der Els works for NIZO. NIZO is the Dutch institute for dairy research. Simon his research focusses on bacteriophages and CRISPR-Cas. We send him our project proposal and called to discuss the details. He was able to give us a better insight into the growing problem of bacteriophages in the dairy industry. We also talked about the feasibility of the project, about which steps should be working relatively easy and which steps would be really challenging. It was nice to have someone specialized in the subject And telling where we should
At the LAB symposium in Egmond aan Zee we met with Simon. We were able to talk about our research and ask questions. For example, he helped us with which promoter we could use.
Arla Skype Call - INPUT DATE
How are you currently combating phages? How frequent and in which way are you currently testing for phages? What are the parameters you are monitoring? Are phages infection a big problem for your company? How long does it take you to get result, starting from probe taking to getting the results in the company?
We are very interested in the current situation in different dairy production plants so that we can adjust our final product which would suit the current wishes of the industry.
In what way will our product be most useful to the end user? What are desired characteristics (in terms of design and implementation) that you would value the most?
Through other talks, we learned that you cannot work with GMOs directly on the factory floor. This makes it that samples have to be taken to another testing place, either within or outside the production facility/plant. This way, our ideal goal is to deliver a system that, with simple maintenance, can continuously survey samples from the main production line for contamination with phages. However, another option is to design a portable device which uses our reporter strain in a contained matter, so you would not need a GMO regulated area. This makes its implementation potentially viable in other settings besides the dairy industry.
What are the parameters for phage infection in a factory (pH, OD600nm, MOI etc.) How does this translate to detection sensitivity?
With this information, we could get a better view of the desired environment for our detection system.
On the 22th of August we talked to Arla in Denmark via Skype. We got some tips on how to communicate about the project. For instance using the word ‘virus’ on the homepage of our WIKI could immediately scare people and that is definitely something you do not want. So it is best to use the word phage or bacteriophage and explain what is meant by this. Two researchers from Arla, who also joined the conversation, were really interested in our project and had some questions prepared. We explained everything and also asked questions, because we are really interested in the point of view of the company to our project.
Unilever Skype Call - INPUT DATE
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Goedhardt, Maaike de Heij - INPUT DATE
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Cogem Symposium - INPUT DATE
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