Where does life begin? Do we feel like working with living creatures when handling bacterial cell cultures? Where is the difference between natural and artificial?

These were only some of the questions we were faced with when agreeing to contribute to the Freiburg participation in an Europe-wide theater project in the framework of SYNENERGENE called “Re-engineering life or Do we want to be unlimited”. The aim of this european teamwork was to initiate a discussion about the rise of synthetic biology with its risks and benefits. The project was organized by a group of humanities students collaborating with directors and researchers from the University of Freiburg.

At first, four members of our iGEM team took part in a discussion with the participants of the project. We were really surprised to get to know a group of students that was not only interested in scientific facts and in our participation in iGEM but also in our personal attitude towards ethical implications of science. It was quite interesting to see two groups of people from totally different backgrounds come together and exchange their thoughts. Questions form a rather philosophic point of view were answered in the context of science what led to amazing conversations. All of us tried to express our own thoughts in a language understandable for everyone, no matter from which background one was coming. This was quite exciting and opened new sights to all of us. The concern that we would be confronted with deep distrust towards synthetic biology soon vanished and we were able to have an open discussion with the other students instead. In fact, we were astonished of how much they wanted to know about the science of synthetic biology.

Crossing-over: Speed-dating with interested visitors in Freiburg.

The project culminated in a week-end of theatre and public talks all dedicated to synthetic biology and its impact on society.

We were invited to take part in a speed-dating like disccusion with interested visitors. As part of so-called "expert-teams" we had members of our iGEM team at several tables during this speed-dating discussion. For approximately one hour visitors could switch between the different tables and talk to experts from biology, philosophy, arts, theology and politics. Every eight minutes a gong announced the next round so that we had eight minutes to discuss our project and synthetic biology in general with a group of three to five interested visitors on our table. The interest of the visitors was focused on many different things, some wanted to know a lot of our project or our motivation to participate in iGEM, some were most interested in the iGEM competition as such and some deeply discussed synthetic biology with us. Over all, during these conversations we got a really good feedback concerning the DiaCHIP, even if some people did not approve of synthetic biology and genetic engineering in general. Anyways, the idea of our project and the possibility of a chip that could detect hundreds of diseases in one measurement sounded like a really good and promising idea to the visitors.

After this round of discussions a panel discussion with Prof. Dr. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Philosophy, Université Paris Sorbonne) and Prof. Dr. Alfred Nordmann (Philosophy, TU Darmstadt) followed that gave a quite interesting insight into synthetic biology from a philosophical point of view. The motivation of research in synthetic biology was only one thing that was discussed where they did not completely agree with one another.

During the event we did not only meet visitors of the public but also some members of the iGEM teams Tübingen and Darmstadt, with whom we passed an interesting evening.