Team:Toronto/Guide
iGEM Ethical Guide
Aim
Using the recommendations made by the Committee on Human Gene Editing: Scientific, Medical, and Ethical Considerations in their 2017 report on Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics and Governance, we aim to create an ethical guideline for iGEM teams to design their projects and public engagement initiatives. This resource will add to the human practices tools created by iGEM and its affiliates by applying broad concepts and standards in public policy to the context of a typical iGEM project. To demonstrate how this guide works we used our iGEM 2017 project as an example.
Context
In order to understand how to adapt the guidelines developed by the Committee on Human Gene Editing: Scientific, Medical, and Ethical Considerations, it is necessary to understand the context in which it was created.
- 1975: Asilomar Conference
- 1993-2005: CRISPR is first discovered.
- 2008-2010: CRISPR is shown to target DNA and cleave it.
- 2011-2012: sgRNA (synthetic guide RNA) allow researchers to target any genes.
- 2015: CRISPR is used in non-viable human embryos
- International Summit on Human Gene Editing
- 2017: Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics and Governance guidelines are published
Basic principles on the ethics of biotechnology including human gene editing discussed internationally.
Francisco Mojica identifies the CRISPR locus and notices bacteriophage DNA between regularly interspersed sequences.
Basic principles on the ethics of biotechnology including human gene editing discussed internationally.
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna discover the importance of crRNA and tracrRNA in guiding Cas9 to its target. The resulting fusion (sgRNA) design makes custom gene editing possible.
National Academy of Science in conjuncture with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society of the United Kingdom organize a summit in December 2015, a few months after a Chinese team controversially publishes a paper on editing non-viable human embryos.
National Academy of Science in conjuncture with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society of the United Kingdom organize a summit.
Committee convened by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and National Academy of Medicine (NAM) performs a year-long in-depth study and publishes a guideline on the current state of genome editing technologies, risks and benefits, scientific, ethical and legislative standards internationally and harmonization.
How does this relate to iGEM?
While CRISPR is certainly an important technology being explored by numerous iGEM teams, it does not capture the full scope of synthetic biology. However, there are a few reasons why the Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics and Governance guidelines are salient in an iGEM context:
- Synthetic Biology is a rapidly evolving field that lacks an updated legislative and ethical framework.
- Both synthetic biology and human gene editing have a strong focus on rapid translation of new technologies.
- Synthetic Biology suffers from similar levels of social apprehension as human gene editing which may hinder the translation of new technologies be it in manufacturing healthcare, agriculture or energy.
- There are a lot of issues regarding containment and unknown interactions (within ecosystems or organisms) that are shared between synthetic biology and gene editing which warrant safety guidelines.
- iGEM is an international competition and much like gene editing, impactful and ethically responsible project development benefits greatly from both local and transnational cooperation and harmonization.
