Find the survey [http://kwiksurveys.com/app/rendersurvey.asp?sid=7swv7y7rd87kysz19907&refer= here].

Three populations

We decided to analyse the answers coming from three distinct populations. The first one is a random population surveyed at the [http://www.salondulivre.ch International Fair for books and press] in Geneva , with people of all age and background. The second population are 2nd year highschool students from [http://www.gymnasedebeaulieu.ch/home/ Gymnase de Beaulieu] Lausanne which have chosen a biological orientation and the third population are students from [http://www.epfl.ch/ EPF Lausanne] (Bachelors and Masters) coming from all faculties.

The purpose of this analysis is to compare populations with increasing the potential exposure to genetic engineering. A random population is less likely to have heard of synthetic biology than biologically oriented high school students and these highschool students are less likely to have enough depth in the field than EPF students which are in an academic field.

Results

General knowledge

In order to evaluate the general knowledge our three populations have , we analyse the next 6 questions. The words "Genetics" and "Cloning" seem popular in all of the three population when one mentions synthetic biology. The EPF Lausanne population is the only population to associate synthetic biology to engineering. It could be due to the fact that knowing iGEM is an EPFL student project, other students assume that the subject must have a link with engineering. These very basic questions in genetics show that every population has a quite good general knowledge about what organisms have genes, that not all bacteria are harmful (the media helped by talking a lot about this subject). There some more confusion for the question on the genetic link between siblings, which is actually a trickier question than expected. Common believes tell us that our siblings are "the same blood" as we are and everyone talks about genes they have in common. So many people fell in the trap and answered that siblings have the same genes, thus are like clones, which obviously is incorrect. Even highschool students had this confusion, even though they're oriented in a biological track, but maybe haven't seen that much genetics yet.

Ethic issues

The last 6 questions address ethical issues and fears people might have like cloning, genetic manipulation and using animals or other living organisms in industry or research.