On the 8th of July we organised a “Drawing with bacteria” workshop at Werfpop, a free music and art festival in Leiden. We were invited by Science meets Business to organise a workshop involving some crazy science. We decided to do bacterial painting with coloured bacteria. Nothing was visible while painting, but after three days the bacteria grew and the drawings magically appeared. We were really impressed by all the amazing works of art people made! The workshop was a great success with both young and old participating. Besides the drawing we also explained our project to anyone who was interested.

Lastly, we asked participants to vote in favor or against genetic modification to see what the general public thought. Votes were cast by adding coloured liquid to large eppendorfs. The final tally showed 110 votes in favor and 45 votes against. The voting allowed us to have many great discussion with the Werfpop visitors on our project and genetic engineering as a whole.

At the Netherlands Biotechnology Conference promising developments in biotechnology were discussed. During the day we attended pitches and lectures given by researchers and students from universities, companies - such as DSM - and the Rathenau Institute. We also presented our project via a posterpitch and held interesting discussions with the many participants at the conference. Particularly the critical questions on our project helped us challenge our plans and decisions. For example, making us think of why we choose to use plasmids over incorporating our system directly into the bacterial genome. Furthermore, the conference was another opportunity to make contact with Dutch iGEM teams, including members of the winning Delft iGEM team of 2017. This allowed us to gather many tips and tricks. Finally, we made contact with several speakers who offered us support and guidance during our project to combat antibiotic resistance. Altogether, the Netherlands Biotechnology Conference provided us with inspiring day where we made many new contacts and promoted our iGEM project!

Five members of our team attended the science day at Twente University, to enthuse high school students for a study in beta or life sciences. During the event we gave a workshop on synthetic biology, explaining the basics of synthetic biology to 25 motivated higher secondary education students.

The workshop started with a presentation on the usefulness of bacteria and the advantages that synthetic biology offer us. Thereafter, the students received a taste of biological research by performing three small experiments, including DNA visualization, ‘agar art’ with colored bacteria and a test to discover where the most bacteria live; e.g. on your phone, the toilet or your hands, and before or after washing? During the experiments, the students were stimulated to think about the biology behind the experiments. For instance, discussing the source of the bacteria’s pink color. It was gratifying to see the students enthusiastically discuss and perform the experiments, being eager to learn about synthetic biology.

We want to give a big shout out to Twente University for inviting us to this great educational event.