Team:EPF-Lausanne/Human Project

Introduction

Aim

The aim of this part of the project is to communicate the research of the EPFL iGEM team, in the context of synthetic biology. The major challenge of this project is to get over the gap between scientific researches and science communication. Indeed, we have observed that a lot of people are afraid of the word cloning, GMO, or biotechnology but without knowing exactly what it means. There seems to be a problem of communication between the scientists and the rest of the world, and we can see that in the votations. Our aim is not to convince that scientific research in Life Sciences is harmless, but we want to inform normal people to enable them to form their own opinion while knowing all the facts (and not only what's believed, but what is scientifically proven).

How

The first part of the project was to talk with people to understand what they think, what they fear and what they know about synthetic biology. Therefore we did a survey and when to some high schools to talk to young students. Then, we are tried to inform people on what we are doing, mainly by giving interviews and writing articles for some newspapers. We are also did some conferences and talks, to scientifics and to general public.

Human Practices explores how synthetic biology might inform safety, security, health, and ethics through the new constructs engeneered by synthetic biology. It also observes the repercussions on economy, politics, and culture resulting from adavances in synthetic biology.

A first part of our work was to share our research to general public, as to scientists. That's why the following section summarizes what we did.

Talks

We went to some high schools' to do a presentation to high school students. We first gave them the survey to have their opinion, and then we did a short presentation about synthetic biology. The idea was to interact with some young people that are potentially interested in our field (they all had taken the physics-math or biology-chemistry specialisation), but without special knowledge about it. We wanted first of all to inform them about some fields of biology and gave them the example of our project. We listened to their feelings about cloning, biotechnology and genetic engineering. After our presentation, we gave them a little time so they could ask more specific questions about what scientific research is about etc.

In order to do this, we took contact with Ms Aminian, a chemistry high school teacher in Burier. We went to give a talk on Wednesday 30th of September and on Friday October 2nd to 4 different classes (about 100 students in total). These students were between 14-16 years of age, and therefore didn't have any special knowledge in the field.

We also had a contact in Valais, and we gave a talk there on October 2nd as well, to about 40 students. These students were a bit older, in average 20-21 years old, and they had already had biology classes for 5 years, so this presentation was of a more advanced level.

During our study trip in Singapour, we presented our iGEM project during a symposium at the Singapore General Hospital, to various doctors, professors and students from the facility and affiliated to it. Here is the presentation. The people attending the symposium were mostly researchers of the hospital and our class colleagues (about 70 people).

We also went on a visit trip to the Merck Serono (EMD Serono) site in Corsier-sur-Fenil (near Vevey), on October 9th. There we gave a short talk about our project, had the possibility to interact with some researchers. Finally, we had the opportunity to visit the site and got a chance to see their bioreactors.

A comic with nice illustration : See this page for a funny comics.

Survey

We did a survey on two aspects of ethics and biology :

- Association of the level of knowledge with the feelings towards synthetic biology

- Opinion of people on whether they think the human have the right to manipulate genes etc

Here is the Survey

Media Work

In order to give more visibility to iGEM and to present the novel field of synthetic biology, we contacted several newspapers to speak about our project and the context in which it is being conducted. Our main goal here is to inform people, to give them a better understanding of what is hidden behind the words and expressions such as "synthetic biology", "cloning", or "genetical engineering".

Below are listed the newspapers we have been in touch with:

24H and La Tribune de Genève

An interview of one member of our team was published along with an article about our project in two broadly read papers of our region : 24 heures and La Tribune de Genève. Link to the article :

Article

Interview

Flash

Article in the Flash, which is the internal newspaper of the EPFL :

Click here to read the entire Flash

Click here to read only our article, called "Bricolage biologique"

We tried to obtain other interviews, so the following newspapers were contacted:

• Le Matin Dimanche :

Redacteur en chef Michel Danthe : not now...

• Le Matin : Impossible

• Le Temps -----> replied: maybe he will follow us in Boston

Contact: Olivier Dessibourg

Journaliste scientifique

Chef de la rubrique "Société"&"Sciences

• Le Nouvelliste.ch

Rédaction Martigny → the member of our team were interviewed on 1st of October. Link to the article : ...?

• 20 Minutes

→ relancé

Communication

We contacted Ariane Vlerick at the EPFL (Coordinatrice Communication de SV) → we are now in contact with :

• the Mediacom Service of EPFL (Jérome Grosse and Frédéric Rauss) → will provide us a help in order to explain our projet in different media
• projet Portes Ouvertes (Alain Herzog)
• presentation in gymnases (Maya Fruehauf)

A high school student followed us during one week
→ here is a short article on his experience during this week