Human Practices

iGEMer's guide to the future

Before we embarked on our Human Practice outreach events, we used Synenergene’s iGEMer’s Guide to the Future. Synenergene is a Mobilization and Mutual Action Plan (MMLAP) sponsored by the European commission- fancy jargon for a government sponsored program to encourage responsible research in synthetic biology. iGEMer’s Guide to the Future contains a variety of modules that go through the various ethical implications and potential long-lasting effects of an iGEM project. We decided that a Value and Stakeholder Matrix would be a beneficial module to complete.

The Value and Stakeholder Matrix helps frame how each stakeholder is involved in a project. The Value and Stakeholder Matrix has stakeholders (i.e. researchers, doctors, investors, etc) going down a column and values associated with the project (i.e. safety, cost, time to produce) going down rows. The goal is to rank values according to the prospective of various stakeholders and add rankings of the value at the end. We put the stakeholders for our project as “patients, doctors, researchers, public, relatives/family, investors, and manufacturers” and values as “safety, cost, time to produce, effectiveness, access, sustainability, and ease of use.” We then proceeded to rank values according to each stakeholder with “2” as most important, “1” as somewhat important, “0” as neutral, and “-“as a deterrent .

A quick search of drug resistance on the CDC website shows an increasing number of bacteria are becoming immune to conventional antibiotics. This is a SERIOUS problem- bacteria that cause ailments ranging from strep throat to gonorrhoeae are outsmarting us at every turn. If antibiotic resistance is not dealt with promptly, common illnesses could prove to be fatal. NU iGEM 2017 made a stride to combat these power- hungry bacteria using our work with CRISPR-Cas9 in OMVs. However, as we learned shortly after beginning the project, genetic research is a slow process and our project will need beyond the scope of 3 months to progress into the late stages. With the time crunch placed on antibiotics, our human practice work focused on educating the greater Chicago community on our project and antibiotic resistance. We focused specifically on educating students and increasing their interest in STEM. Throughout the course of the summer, we reached out to various experts in the field of antibiotics and asked them questions. Using their answers and our newly knowledge, we then honed our curriculum and project respectively.

Center for talent development

Northwestern holds academic enrichment camps, “Center for Talent Development (CTD)”, throughout the summer for K-12 grades. We got in touch with the teachers involved in CTD and made a presentation for a high school biotechnology class. Our team made a PowerPoint slide highlighting the basics of CRISPR/Cas9 and OMVs in relation to our project. Additionally, we created a Jeopardy game at the end of the presentation to further engage the students.

Generally, the students seemed engaged and interested in our presentation. We noticed visible excitement when we talked about the future potential of genetic engineering, such as “designer babies” or making “super humans”. Our results (see below: figure 1 and figure 2) from the pre and post survey of the activity show that overall, student’s knowledge of CRISPR/Cas9 increased as well as their interest in pursuing a career/higher education in science. The interest in wet lab work remained relatively the same.