Education

At our booth, we wanted to show that synthetic biology is not an abstract laboratory concept, but something everyone can relate to. With hands-on activities and playful learning, we invited visitors to rethink how they see biology and bacteria.

Key takeaways:

• Biology is exciting and powerful – it sparks creativity and can drive real change.
• Not all bacteria are harmful – many are beneficial, and synthetic biology allows us to unlock their potential.
• Synthetic biology opens doors to solutions – from sustainability and medicine to protecting our environment.

• Overall, it was a very positive experience: we had content for every age group and could engage with very diverse audiences.
• Flexibility was key, since visitors did not move through the stations in chronological order. We adapted our conversations spontaneously and learned to go into different levels of detail at each station.
• For children, lab coats were an ideal icebreaker. From there, we could start with playful questions. On the day itself, we noticed that connecting everything to the digging challenge worked particularly well.
• To help children connect the digging challenge to our project, we started with simple questions: “What do the tree outside, your pet, and you have in common?” → “They live!” Then: “What do parents always say when we come home?” → “Wash your hands – because of bacteria!” This opened the door to talk about how bacteria not only cause disease but can also help. After the challenge, we smoothly transitioned to the topic of resource scarcity and recycling – and then explained how our bacterium can help recycle platinum.
• Storytelling and everyday examples proved very helpful to make complex content tangible.
• We learned to tailor content differently depending on the target group: playful for children, discussion-oriented for teenagers, and more detailed/scientific for adults or experts.
• Materials such as games, lab coats, or interactive elements were essential to actively involve visitors – they made our topic tangible and experiential.
• Overall, the event also gave us confidence: we realized we can explain our project spontaneously, in an age-appropriate way, and still scientifically sound.

Why is teaching school kids about synthetic biology important? Getting relatable insights at a young age is very important to introduce a possible path and showing that problems can be solved using distinct concepts. Synthetic biology requires critical thinking and interdisciplinary skills, which are useful abilities not only in science!

• What was the core message we tried to communicate? Problems which affect the whole population can be approached using methods from other disciplines. On first thoughts no one would believe that bacteria can be used to recycle spent catalysts. By thinking innovative and out of the box almost any problem can be solved.
• How did we bring the message across? We introduced the classes to the problem by presenting statistics about PGM waste. Then we linked it to our project by using their ideas on what bacteria could possibly do to create the understanding of thinking more broadly. Using their ideas we guided them through our project from the very beginning to the end. We also briefly presented our own life course to show that we once were in their phase of life.
• What did we take away from it? Synthetic biology is despite its importance still quite unknown to the broad population and what possible applications it has. By doing more and better science communication not only to young people but also non-specialists can help solving world wide problems using synthetic biology.