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Latest revision as of 01:19, 2 November 2017

Education & Public Engagement


- A Trip to the Future and Beyond!



If you want change, look to the future! Such was the wording of our core philosophy. A philosophy that was carried out, by reaching out to the people of our society to ensure the engagement of the next generation, within the world of synthetic biology.
Ever since World War II, the West has seen an expansion and intensification of anti-scientific sentiment, which today primarily concern Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). We will for that reason explore GMO’s role in history, to see if a historical perspective will allow us reach a new understanding of these sentiments. You can read all about it here.


Danish Science Festival


At the Danish Science Festival we hosted a workshop for kindergarteners, during which we taught them about synthetic biology, sustainability, the history of GMO, and bioethics. The children would in turn teach us as well, as they showed us the endless possibilities for bacteria designs, through the “Draw-a-Bacteria”-contest. This inspired us to reevaluate our initial idea.


School Project Interview with 6th Graders


Following the Danish Science Festival, we were contacted by two enthusiastic 6th graders, Bastian and Magnus. The two boys wanted to learn more about iGEM and GMO, which they intended to write about in a school project. They were curious to what range GMO could be used, and how we utilised it in our project, the PowerLeaf.


UNF Summer Camp


The UNF Summer Camp is an opportunity for high school students to show extra dedication towards science. We talked to some of the brightest young minds imaginable, all of whom aim to work in different fields of science in the future. At the summer camp, we held a presentation about our project, the iGEM competition, as well as how to handle and work with genes. We taught them how to assemble BioBricks and provided them with BioBricks for DNA assembly experiments, creating a ‘hands-on’ experience for these enthusiastic teenagers.
One of the high school students suggested that the Powerleaf should be able to rotate according to the sun, to ensure maximum exposure and outcome. We took this brilliant advice into consideration and contacted Robot Systems Engineer student, Oliver Klinggaard, who helped us with the potential implementation of a pan/tilt system. He provided us with his recent project report on the subject, as well as a description of the adjustments required for the implementation in our system, which you can find here.
Two students from the UNF Summer Camp thought the PowerLeaf was an interesting approach to sustainable energy, and they wanted to hear even more! So, they contacted us in late October, as they were interested to work on a project about green technology.



The Academy for Talented Youth


We hosted a workshop for the Academy for Talented Youth, an association for some of the most talented high school students in Denmark. During the workshop we invited the students into our laboratories, where they conducted a miniprep and a gel electrophoresis on bacteria containing our BioBricks. Additionally, we held a presentation and discussion about our project, with the dedicated students. We strongly believe in mutual communication and made sure to compile feedback, all of which was positive!



Presentations for the Local Schools


The local high schools, Mulernes Legatskole and Odense Tekniske Gymnasium, invited us to present our project, in addition to starting discussions with the students about GMO.
An 8th grade class from the local public school, Odense Friskole, were invited to see our laboratory workspace. It was a challenge to successfully convey our project and the concept of synthetic biology in a way that would be easily understandable by 8th graders, who have only recently been introduced to science. A challenge that we accepted and solved, by relaying the fundamentals in synthetic biology, e.g. the basics of a cell, DNA, and GMO.
From all of these presentations and interactions with younger individuals, we had a strong intuition that it had made an influence on their awareness of synthetic biology. This intuition was supported by the positive feedback provided by teachers and students. An awareness of how new scientific technologies can be a feasible solution to a possible energy crisis. Technologies such as synthetic biology, with endless capabilities to achieve efficacy, since no one knows what tomorrow brings. For more information about this read To Future iGEM Teams


Final Presentation at SDU-Denmark


The day before we travelled to Boston, we booked one of the big auditoriums at the University of Southern Denmark, for the final rehearsal of our jamboree presentation. We made sure to take note of all the feedback and tips we received, while also implementing these into our final presentation. This event was promoted on all the information screens at our university in order to attract a broad audience and increase the interest for iGEM. Thus, making it possible to reach a substantial amount of future applications for the SDU-iGEM team and ensure that the iGEM spirit will continue to prosper in the future!


Social Media


Social media is an easy way to impact a high number of people, so a strategy was concocted with the intention of reaching as many people as possible with our outreach. Our strategy yielded marvellous results, amongst which was a video on our project, that reached viewers equal to 16% of our hometown’s population, along with becoming the second most seen bulletin of the year from University of Southern Denmark. They have also asked us to film our experiences at the Jamboree, which will feature on the homepage of the student’ initiative BetonTV. Several articles were written about our project in local newspapers, one was even featured in the saturday special.
You can read all about our social media strategy and results
here. The commercial can be seen right here:


Safety


Proper Risk Management

Biosafety and proper risk assessment are important aspects to consider before any handling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). There are several concerns that must be addressed properly. The safety of the public as well as of the environment is of the utmost importance, but the safety of the person in direct contact with the GMOs should not be compromised either. The risk associated with laboratorial work can be evaluated using the statement “Risk = Hazard ✕ Probability”. To responsibly address this inquiry, the entire team was given a mandatory lab safety course held by Lab Technician Simon Rose. In addition, we received a detailed handbook regarding lab safety. This ensured that all our team members were well equipped to work safely in the lab. Throughout the project we have continuously been evaluating the safety of our work. These assessments can be found in the safety form. Furthermore, our team participated in the 5th annual BioBrick workshop hosted by DTU BioBuilders. Here we participated in a lab safety course before entering their laboratories. Both of these lab safety courses gave us the necessary knowledge to work safely with GMO and handle waste appropriate, as well as the according procedures in case of an emergency.
In the lab, we worked with several potentially harmful chemical agents such as dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), ethidium bromide, chloroform, phenol, Congo red, antibiotics, and autoclaved glycerol. These chemical agents were handled using gloves at all times, and whenever deemed necessary, handled in a fume hood. Gloves were worn when necessary, and clean lab coats were worn restrictedly in the laboratorial areas. To visualise bands in agarose gels, we used an UV board. UV rays are carcinogenic when exposure is frequent and prolonged. To reduce the amount of exposure, several precautions were made. Gloves, long sleeves and a facial screen were worn at all times, and the time spend at the UV board was kept at a minimum.

Public and Environmental Risk Assessment

The chassis organisms containing the system is meant to be contained in a device, which is incorporated into an urban environment. While this device would be a safely enclosed container, it still possess the risk of physical breakage from violent acts or environmental disturbances. For this reason, we consulted a plastics expert, who advised us to use the plastic known as Polycarbonate. This plastic is remarkably durable, with the ability to ward off most physical traumas. The plastics expert has estimated that such a container would last in an urban environment for at least 20 years, and most likely more than that. To illustrate the durability of the plastics, he notified us of several devices from the 1980s made of the same plastic, which still stand strong today.
One of the biggest concerns would be the release of GMOs into nature. While the GMOs used are not pathogenetic, they would be able to share the plasmids containing antibiotic resistance selectors to other bacteria, that might be pathogenic. Antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria complicates the treatment of an infected individual and could, in tragic cases, be the difference between life and death. However small the risk of this scenario might be, it should be addressed properly. Furthermore, antibiotic resistant E. Coli strains could outmatch some of their fellow E. Coli strains through natural selection. This could negatively affect the balance of nature, that we are aiming to restore with the development of the PowerLeaf.
To avoid these risks, several kill switch mechanisms should be implemented into the final device. This could be performed by implementation of a kill switch activated by exposure to light in the energy converting unit. This would of course mean, that the energy converting unit’s container would need to block all sunlight. A task that could easily be carried out by adding Carbon Black to the required areas of the container. The energy storing unit, which requires light to function, could then have a kill switch which makes it dependent on the presence of the energy converting unit. This could be accomplished by having harmless molecules, not naturally found in nature but required for the survival of the energy converting unit, circulating in the system. A similar effect could be accomplished by making the bacteria in the energy converting and storing units codependent on each other for their survival. The implementation of such kill switch mechanisms would tremendously improve the biosafety of the device by opposing hazards related to any kind of physical breakage.

List of Assessed Items


Chassis Organisms
Escherichia coli strains: K12, TOP10, MG1655, KG22, BW25113, DF25663127, SØ928
Geobacter Sulfurreducens strain: PCA
Vectors
pSB1A2: An iGEM plasmid backbone carrying a ampicillin resistance gene
pSB1A3: An iGEM plasmid backbone carrying an ampicillin resistance gene
pSB1C3: An iGEM plasmid backbone carrying a chloramphenicol resistance gene
pSB3C5: An iGEM plasmid backbone carrying a chloramphenicol resistance gene
pSB1K3: An iGEM plasmid backbone carrying a kanamycin resistance gene
pSB4K5: An iGEM plasmid backbone carrying a kanamycin resistance gene
pSB3K3: An iGEM plasmid backbone carrying a kanamycin resistance gene
Bacteriophages
P1 phage, using its site-specific recombinase for transduction of E. Coli

Bioethics


- A Philosopher’s Guide to the Future


“The facts of life... to make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it's been established.”


Tyrell, Bladerunner


Synthetic biology and the iGEM competition are aimed to help solve societal issues, issues such as agriculture, medical research, and environmental resource management, the last of which has been our motivation throughout our project. However, while synthetic biology offers many new exciting possibilities, several concerns have to be met when dealing with living organisms. Against, the excitement of the iGEM community, skeptics have pointed to the uncertainty and potentiality for unwanted consequences that might arise from working with synthetic biology. We as a team decided to give these concerns some serious thought! We have had several conversations on topics such as meta ethics, applied ethics, sustainability, GMO, and so on. Furthermore, we established an open and honest mode of discourse to use when engaging with other teams and the public. We held a workshop in bioethics in relation to our Danish Meetup. This workshop consisted of a historical insight into the history of GMO provided by our very own historian, as well as a hefty, kind-hearted debate, supervised by our own philosopher.
All of these considerations, debates, and results led our philosopher Lene to write a longer guidebook entailing an overview of the various bioethical arguments often made for and against the use of synthetic biology. The guidebook is mainly an insight into the most important ethical considerations made by our team, e.g. how they shaped our product, but it also offers a personal and clear overview of arguments and principles meant to help future teams to get a conversation on ethics started!
Make sure to give this guidebook a read, it is definitely worth it!