Team:Hong Kong HKUST/HP/Silver
Team Hong Kong - HKUST
Human Practices (Silver)
With Domilox being a safety switch for genetic containment, our human practices also focus on the different aspects of genetic containment strategies and biosafety through the interaction with different stakeholders.
Here is how we have emphasize biosafety and our project safety in each Human Practice activities:
1. Hong Kong Summer Science Party (Every Sunday: 23/07 - 20/08)
Being the first human practice event in the public, the Science party serves its purpose for us to test out what the public thinks about synthetic biology. During the workshop for children, parents get time to have thorough chat with some of the team members. For a lot of the adults, they feel unable to relate to Genetic modified organisms for research purposes. However, when it comes to topics like genetic modified crops as food sources, people usually have negative views towards it. We took this opportunity to introduce our project while suggesting different situations in which the project will be useful.
With our Domilox safety switch, we try to promote that there could be a safe way to handle GMOs so that it does not have to be something that people fear.
We have received positive feedbacks, such as faith that our project could overcome some of the safety issues affiliated with GMOs. On the other hand, we also received some interesting arguments towards our project. For example, some still consider the method of phenotypically reverting the organism back to its original state to be an artificial method, thus it still has significant safety concerns.
Other results from the dialogue with science party audiences can be found here
2. Interview with Experts
Current regulations of synthetic biology and genetic modified organisms in different areas has been discussed to verify the safety of our project. At the same time, other possible methods for project development had also been discussed to get the best possible design in which will be easy for future researchers to use. Characteristics of our project such as effectiveness, sensitivity, and consistency has been considered throughout the discussion and had been integrated into the project afterwards.
When we asked Prof. Matthew Bennett on his personal view towards the GM crops, Prof. Bennett pointed out that
“There’re a lot of things that have been genetically modified for a long time ago: The resistant Monsanto’s round-up corn that are highly resistant to bugs, dependent upon a certain chemical. It has been around for so long where people didn’t think of it as GMOs anymore.”
Although these crops were genetically modified, overtime, people assume that the characteristics of the organism are originated from nature. In communicating and delivering our project to the public, the team therefore has to think about whether this project will change people’s mindset towards GM crops - positively, they could be more cautious towards it, or negatively, they might have an increased negative perception towards GM crops and shun it. In this human practices activity, we strived to promote the former and avoid the latter.
3. InnoCarnival (21/10/2017 – 29/10/2017)
The InnoCarnival is a platform to showcase modern innovation which can benefit humans. During the week, we have met people ranging from young children to the elderlies. After some basic explanation on how the project works, we were able to step further into the possible application of our project. This shows the public that there are no limitations on what a project can do, but it depends on how much researchers and investors are willing to step out of the box and use whatever is available as a stepping stone to build even more advanced products.
4. Synthetic Biology Articles
For the public to believe in synthetic biology and our project, they need to know what synthetic biology is and how it relates to their daily life. Therefore, we have written articles in Chinese and posted onto a local scientific Facebook page to guide readers through the world of synthetic biology. We also tackled misconceptions regarding synthetic biology through the articles, teaching about how we can analyze the safety of those GM food instead of fully trusting the media.
