Gold: Integrated Human Practices

Overview

By integrating with our Human Practices and the results from our wet lab experiments and modeling, iGEM2017 Team TokyoTech have executed our project with improved design in accordance with comments from general public, and have strengthened the public engagement of a two-way dialogue between our team and the public through this summer. (See here to know how we integrated our project)

How did we integrate them?

At an early stage of our project design, we decided to establish co-culture system between bacteria and human cells regardless of the practical application. For 10 years, our team has used E. coli for the project. However, we had to use something new to adopt a paradigm shift in iGEM community. Thus, we added human cells to explore the interaction between them in our body.

In May Festival held in University of Tokyo, we introduced our project to the general public in the poster session. The audiences gave us a lot of advice and valuable comments that later led us and our project to move forward. One of them advised us that we should apply the project for the field of therapeutics. That advice opened up a door for the application of our project which had hovered up a level of fundamental research.

We had planned to use Caco2 cells derived from intestine, but our PI advised us that EAhy926 cells derived from vessels are better for the therapeutic application. We accepted that advice and started to culture the cells and transduced the constructs.

Our PI gave us a chance to discuss the direction of our project with the experts from molecular biology in Keio University. At that time, our project had a problem of what we call "Cross-talk." Cross-talk is a phenomenon which in this case, human cells receive own signaling molecules which they already released. Some of the experts suggested to us that we should use a plant hormone to prevent it.

Based on the advice from the experts, we decided to use iP(Isopentenyl adenine) as the alternative signaling molecule from human cells to E. coli.

Interaction between HP and Experiment

From our full year experience in iGEM, we realized the necessity of verifying from a different point of view. In other words, we realized that we researchers ourselves must also continuously reflect on the risks and costs & benefits of the science we discover. In the workshop that we attended as our initial activity in iGEM, we learned from social scientists, the danger of grounding on the deficit model, which fixes on the idea that the general public is ignorant, and the importance of the two-way dialogue between society and researchers.