Team:Waterloo/Integrated Practices
Introduction to Policy and Practices (PNP)
iGEM 2018
University of Waterloo iGEM, 2017
Welcome to Waterloo’s iGEM Policy and Practices team! This guide is designed to help members understand what our team is about and the logistics behind our roles for the project. In the next few pages, this guide will focus on the i GEM competition, responsibilities of PNP, how we work to fulfil those responsibilities, and the selection process of our annual project.
What is the iGEM Competition?
The International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the education and advancement of synthetic biology, as well as promoting an open science community and collaboration.
One of their three main programs is the annual iGEM Competition, also known as the Jamboree, which is hosted in Boston every year. Student teams around the world build genetically engineered systems using standard biological parts called BioBricks and showcase their parts at the Jamboree, competing for various awards and prizes.
iGEM projects are organized into specific subject areas. The standard ten parts-based tracks are as follows: Diagnostics, Energy, Environment, Food & Nutrition, Foundational Advance, High School, Information Processing, Manufacturing, New Applications, and Therapeutics. Additionally there are four Special Tracks, which are showcased in a separate space at the Jamboree and although are not eligible for the Grand Prize.
At the Jamboree, iGEM teams will be competing for various awards, including Medals, Track Awards, and Special Awards. Any number of teams can win one of three levels of medals: Bronze, Silver and Gold. Each level of award has its own specific medal criteria, and teams must prove to judges that they have fulfilled them all to earn the medal.
iGEM teams can also win other special awards. While any number of teams can be awarded medal standards, only one team can win each of the following awards:
- The Grand Prize: awarded to one team based on the overall excellence of their entire project
- Standard Track: awarded to the team with the best project in each Standard Track
- Special Track Awards: awarded to the team with the best project in each Special Track
- Special Prizes: awarded to honour unique and innovative
contributions to iGEM including: Best Poster, Best
Presentation, Best Wiki, Best New Basic Part, etc...
What Makes iGEM Projects GREAT?
The first eight aspects are the key iGEM values that apply to all teams, irrespective of track. The final two aspects are distinct for standard (parts-based) tracks and special (non-parts-based) tracks.
- How impressive is this project?
- How creative is the team’s project?
- Did the project work?
- How much did the team accomplish?
- Is the project likely to have an impact?
- How well are engineering principles used?
- How thoughtful and thorough was the team’s consideration of human practices?
- How much of the work did the team do themselves and how much was done by others?
- Did the team design a project based on synthetic biology and standard parts?
- Are the functions and behaviors of the parts well-documented in the Registry?
What is PNP?
While the Lab and Math Teams are in charge of conducting experiments in the development of the project, the role of PNP is to support them by assessing the non-technical aspects that are just as important as purely getting results. In addition, we are responsible for connecting with the public to generate more interest and awareness in the field of synthetic biology.
Why is PNP important?
PNP is responsible for bridging the world of science to the rest of the global community. Science does not exist in isolation, rather it is a player within the larger local, national, and global communities. Within the science community, we are responsible for informing stakeholders (those who are directly affected by our project) about the work being done and evaluate the logistical executions of how to implement the project commercially. Together, this is what it means to go “beyond the bench” (this phrase has been used to describe PNP in the past, however without a further explanation it can be an unhelpful and confusing description).
PNP and the Lab Team work hand-in-hand. In every step of the project, teams should be considering the policy and practice side of things. This includes:
- Before beginning an experiment to evaluate any potential work
- Every time you go to work on your project throughout the year, especially as the project develops throughout the build season
- Following the completion of the project as you release it into the world
- When you come back and refine your project to evaluate the reaction and reception from the public
PNP Medal Criteria
Each subteam has their own aspect of the medal criteria that they focus on throughout the year. PNP focuses on (but is not strictly limited to) the following criteria:
*Collaborations (silver): Convince the judges you have significantly worked with any other registered iGEM team in a meaningful way. For example, mentor a team, characterize a part, troubleshoot a project, model/simulate a system or validate a software/hardware solution to a synbio problem, or be the recipient of any of these activities.*
*Human Practices (silver): Convince the judges you have thought carefully and creatively about whether your work is safe, responsible, and good for the world. You could accomplish this through engaging with your local, national and/or international communities or other approaches. (Exceptional outreach and education work is recognized by the Education & Public Engagement Special Award)*
*Integrated Human Practices (gold): Expand on your silver medal activity by demonstrating how you have integrated the investigated issues into the design and/or execution of your project. (Exceptional Human Practices is recognized by the Best Integrated Human Practices award)*
The current iGEM rubric contains four aspects for evaluating Integrated Human Practices:
- Was their work integrated into their project?
- Does it serve as an inspiring example to others?
- Is it documented in a way that others can build upon?
- Was it thoughtfully implemented (i.e., did they explain the context, rationale, prior work)?
What Projects Need to be Accomplished in PNP?
Project Assessment:
Is your work safe, responsible, and good for the world?
It is critical to evaluate how science can affect the people who will be implementing it and the people outside of the science community. According to the 2016 judging handbook, teams should “pursue questions relating to regulatory, economic, ethical, social, legal, philosophical, ecological, security, or other societal questions relating to synthetic biology”. This is where PNP comes into play. Referring to the Integrated Human Practices medal criteria, projects should be developed with local and/or global considerations. A way to achieve this is consult various stakeholders, experts, and the team throughout the design, execution, and presentation of their project.
In addition, PNP teams up with Lab to come up with potential applications for the main project idea using engineering principles, where the motivation for potential applications of the project must clearly defined. For example, we could take the overall project and explore how it interacts in different environments, how it can be implemented in different situations, how we can alter it slightly to gain new/different functions, how it can be combined with other project, etc... Project Assessment is particularly important as it fulfils both silver and gold criteria.
Example Projects:
- The 2017 team created a catalogue of 3D printable lab equipment to increase customizability and access to printable lab wear and decrease cost to teams.
Waterloo iGEM 2017 also wanted to indirectly gauge the public’s opinion on the project through the use of an Implicit Association Task (IAT). This task can show if people have an implicit, or subconscious, bias against or towards certain words. By utilizing words that relate to our lab project in the IAT, we can determine which words are most likely to provoke a subconscious reaction in the general public and use this information to tailor the presentation of our project to decrease public bias.
Waterloo iGEM’s 2017 project were engineered prions that had enhanced function when in the amyloid state, and the team investigated the use of our engineered proin joining aptamers (oligonucleotides) to the prion domain amplify the detection rate of viruses.
Open Science:
Another important aspect in the design of a project is open science is to documented in a way that others can build upon: improving the flow of information, minimizing restrictions on the use of intellectual resources, and increasing transparency of research practice. With a scientific field as new and novel as synthetic biology, it is imperative that all accomplishments and research is open for all teams, research groups and industries to access in order to advance and progress the field forward as efficiently as possible.
Public Engagement:
Education & Public Engagement allows for outreach and education work regarding synthetic biology. Great public engagement projects will focus on establishing a dialogue or sparking new scientific interest in the synthetic biology community in general (and not your specific project). This criteria is not limited to just members of the policy team - all members of iGEM should get involved.
The current iGEM rubric contains four aspects for evaluating Education & Public Engagement:
- Did their work establish a dialogue?
- Does it serve as an inspiring example to others?
- Is it documented in a way that others can build upon?
- Was it thoughtfully implemented (i.e., did they explain the context, rationale, prior work)?
Example Projects:
- Waterloo iGEM 2015 gave weekly sessions to children at ESQ (Engineering Science Quest), a children’s camp on the Waterloo campus.
- Waterloo iGEM runs a synthetic biology workshop for top high school students attending SHAD Valley in Waterloo. In this workshop, we introduced concepts within synthetic biology, conducted lab experiments, and discussed social aspects of science in general. Our curriculum is available in the 2017 PNP Google Drive and (hopefully) on the wiki too
- Waterloo iGEM maintains several social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and a team webpage
Collaborations
In iGEM, the idea of significance plays a vital role in determining the validity of contributions for medal criteria. As outlined by iGEM HQ, we believe that a collaboration or contribution is significant if it betters a project or a team, ultimately contributing towards its advancement. That being said, significance is also largely subjective because what one judge may see as beneficial, another may believe it to be too passive of an effort to qualify.
Collaboration is not specific to PNP. All subteams should collaborate with other teams to improve different aspects of projects. Examples of how Waterloo iGEM has helped out new teams entering iGEM providing web construction technical support, providing a guide to accelerate new development, and assisting with the development of their wiki pages. In addition, Waterloo participates in an annual oGEM conference for iGEM teams in Ontario. At the conference, teams all share their ongoing projects, critique the projects of others, and allow them to network with each other and develop ideas for collaborations.
Project Determination
The 2016 Imperial College team inspired us to create a structured method to select the annual project for the team. The typical selection process for the project begins with some of our members coming up with ideas and presenting them to the whole team. From there, members across the entire team conduct individual assessments, which get compiled to produce a quantitative analysis of which project the team believed was the best to pursue. The assessments were based on the set of criteria described as follows:
Primary Criteria:
- Novelty: As the focus of the competition is the advancement of synthetic biology, teams must either build upon a previous project or come up with an original idea
- Feasibility: It is important to consider the amount of resources available to teams such that they can produce a complete project
Secondary Criteria:
- Interest: Teams with a greater interest in their project are like more likely to excel above and beyond
- Applicability to Subteams: It is important to select a project that will enable all subteams to work on their respective aspects of the project to fulfil medal criteria
- Impact/Usefulness: The degree to which how useful the project is and how it can impact society (how stakeholders benefit and how many stakeholders are benefitted).
Each of the criteria are assigned a weight for each track, in an attempt to reflect how different tracts emphasize different criteria to varying degrees. For example, if we’re in the Foundational Advance and New Application tracks, the novelty of the project is much more important).
The general criteria weighting is described as follows:
Feasibility - /5
Novelty - /4
Application to Subteam - /3
Impact - /2
Usefulness - /2
Interest - /2
The projects with highest scores are taken to our iGEM advisors from the Faculty of Biology. The advisors offer technical advice, as well as suggestions based on their experience advising previous iGEM teams. The final decision is made after consideration of all of these evaluations.
Team Wiki
As part of the iGEM Competition Requirements, each team is responsible for constructing a wiki site to demonstrate their projects. In the later half of the year, our team puts together a Wiki Taskforce, who are members across the whole team who are responsible for creating the layout, content and the code for the wiki page. Each subteam focuses on writing about their own aspects of the project. For PNP, this means we create the pages for Human Practices, Public Engagement, Project Assessment, and other notable projects that we work on throughout the year. We also contribute to pages that are general to the whole project including project design, online notebook, and safety assessment; wherever we can contribute.
The main tasks that come with Wiki building are the design of the page’s physical appearance, the writing of content to fill the pages with, and the coding of the page. The team tries to keep a consistent theme throughout the wiki through the use of the same colour scheme, the same designs, similar use of images, and other visual aspects. Recently, the team has begun using a program called sketch to design graphics, and in our most recent wiki - 2017 - we have incorporated designs into many of our wiki pages. While the development of content is specific to each subteam and the work they did, there is some content that can be contributed to by any team member. This includes outlines of collaboration, descriptions of the team and individual bios. Finally, the actual code behind the page is headed by the math and modelling team, but any team member is welcome to contribute according to their ability.
Wiki development is a stressful process with a very strict time constraint as iGEM sets a wiki freeze day that all teams are subject to. We hope that you are up to the challenge, and look forward to seeing all that you contribute.
Conclusion - What’s Next?
So what’s next? Well, for the remainder of the Winter Term, Waterloo iGEM will be coming up with this year’s project idea. Anyone can make a project proposal, so if you have an idea that you want to pitch forward, go for it! On the PNP side of things to do, we’ll start thinking about how we want to tackle our medal criteria, whether it’s building off of tasks from last year or coming up with new ideas altogether. The Spring Term is when all subteams really start working on their respective tasks until the Jamboree in October/November.
So there you have it! Hopefully after reading this guide you have a better understanding of the iGEM Competition and what our responsibilities are as the Policy and Practices subteam. We strive to maintain an open environment to promote discussion and collaboration amongst ourselves, but most importantly, we want everyone to have a positive experience as part of Waterloo iGEM. In addition, it is imperative that you have a great summer - it is bronze medal criteria. We look forward to hearing your ideas and input this year, and don’t forget; feel free to ASK anything if you need clarification.
Finally, add to this guide, distribute it to other teams, and make it your own so that teams in the future can benefit from all you learn.
Welcome to the team, and we look forward to working with you!
