Human practice is a key component of each iGEM project Therefore, it also played an important role in our work. The DiaCHIP should be available for everyone, even accessible in tropical or arid regions. Precisely because of this feature we wanted to know how the DiaCHIP is perceived in public. Therefore we conducted a survey to evaluate the necessity and acceptance of our project.
When somebody is working in the field of synthetic biology it is inevitable for the researcher to deal with some ethical questions. Therefore, we had a meeting with the ethics committee (PD Dr. J. Boldt) to evaluate our project and ethics in synthetic biology in general.
Besides this important part we educated the public about synthetic biology and gave interested pedestrians a deeper insight into molecular biology as well as into our project at this year's Freiburg sience fair. Additionally, we gave a lecture about synthetic biology and the iGEM Competition in general for a class of Liberal Arts and Sciences students at the University College of Freiburg.
Finally, we participated in an Europe-wide theater project in the framework of SYNENERGENE called “Re-engineering life or Do we want to be unlimited” as experts with scientific background.