Human Practice Strategy

Dissemination of Knowledge to future researchers

The Human Practices strategy is directed by our team’s desire to bridge the gap between high school students and Synthetic Biology. The aim is to push the boundaries of high school education by increasing awareness of new opportunities in science.

Outline of our visions - what did we want to accomplish?

We intended launching numerous of education activities, reaching relevant audience of high schoolers and fellow university student with awareness of iGEM and expose of our project. We invited three high school students into our team as contributing parties with the purpose of creating a “ripple effects” of learning and teaching. Awareness was further facilitated via. social media's, conferences and articles in public science newspapers.

Considerations in strategy design

The primary focus of the Human Practise Strategy was involvement. Involvement is an essential step towards getting people interested in the world of synthetic biology. We want to address critical questions about genetic modification in biological organisms, and involve peers in related discussions. This is a vital element as discussions bring new thoughts, encourage the exchange of ideas and raise the level of learning. Advanced knowledge about particular topics in synthetic biology could contribute a solid foundation to young students along with promoting innovative futuristic ideas and perspectives to the iGEM community.

Education is our second agenda and we seek to inspire high school students to explore and adapt many scientific tools. Familiarising the younger generation with Synthetic Biology could inspire well-educated and skilled scientists to the benefit of a bio-sustainable environment in line with iGEM philosophy. We believe that education is a key point to generate new hypotheses, create new concepts in synthetic biology. Teaching elements will raise awareness of ethics to address concerns about ‘playing God’ with nature, and the potential risk of GMOs.

Safety is our third focus as we believe young scientists should be responsible with the workflow of their project and its output. We believe it is crucial to ensure the safety of the environment and personal health. Many of the techniques used in the laboratory and the handling of a variety of organisms may be equally dangerous. Therefore risk assessment of planned projects is essential. This was addressed in one of the elements in our outreach work to the high school students. We examined the potential consequences of the work, and encouraged the students to raise concerns about laboratory work, project design and the implementation of innovative ideas into real life. This is elaborated upon in detail in Ethic implications on society.

What did we do?

The BioBrick workshop

Addressing fellow students, we planned and hosted “BioBrick workshops”, a three day event at the Technical University of Denmark. Assembling iGEM teams from across Denmark, we acquainted more than 30 university students with basic cloning methods and lab safety, along with providing an introduction to the iGEM rules and requirements. The workshop was an important tool in educating our fellow iGEM teams - ensuring familiarity with basic techniques. In addition to the clear teaching elements, we indirectly raised ethics discussions by demonstrating the prospects and implications of the team's project concluding an increased awareness of ethics in Synthetic Biology - Read more

High school team members

As mentioned – our team included three high school students during the process. We provided an ideal learning situation with hands-on teaching in the fundamental aspects of Synthetic Biology. The students facilitated their own teaching session at their high school, promoting iGEM and iGEM's key values. Their participation contributed to our project, and they also learned a lot! - Read more

Elite student interaction.

We provided a workshop with a student organisation for elite students, Biotech Academy. We hosted a 3 day workshop and introduced a group of elite high school students to the laboratory environment and transformation techniques - Read more

Spreading awareness of iGEM

Our team used various means of communication to reach other students, both direct and online. We took part in the Life Science and Beyond conference hosted by SBE.DTU at Technical University of Denmark. We promoted the iGEM competition and discussed a range of topics within Synthetic Biology and their potential as iGEM projects - Read more. Two team members participated in the BioBusiness Summer School at the University of Copenhagen. Representatives of our team engaged an array of discussions within an experienced scientific environment. Attendance of the events and programmes was rewarded with inspiring ideas for implementation of iGEM ideas into real life, launching start-ups as well as discussing the ethics of Synthetic Biology. Read more??

iGEM on the official university profile

The DTU iGEM team have become an official Bluedot project at the Technical University of Denmark. This constitutes major recognition from the university and is a resounding statement of support, promoting the iGEM competition in an extremely strong way - Read more

Extending outreach to social media

We also used online social media platforms to reach second-link contacts. We reached an international and diverse audience through Facebook and Twitter, updating the surrounding community about our project and different wet-lab techniques. This social media outreach was a great success, accumulating increasing interest with an ever-rising numbers of ‘likes’, 'follows' and 'shares' - Read more

Conclusion

In conclusion, our Human Practice Strategy was highly successful containing elements of knowledge sharing and awareness raising within different educational levels. We raised interest about Synthetic Biology while investigating the effects and possible opportunities of our project. We managed to reach further than expected into our scientific and geographic community, as the things we set in motion, kept moving. As this project ends, much has been accomplished - but this is not the end of our work. The waves that we have started will keep on going in the memories of those groups and individuals that we came into contact with.

Highschool students

As a part of the DTU iGEM 2015 outreach, three eager highschool students followed the joined journey of hard work! By taking part in the meetings, working in the lab and participating in the Giant Jamboree they were given the possibility to experience working on a scientific project and to follow their interest in biotechnology. 

Here they are - the we proudly present Nicolai, Maja and Thea - young and ready to take on the challege!

Elite Student Interaction

Pernille write

Public relations

We believe in the importance of Biotechnology and the importance of communicating it to the general public. To facilitate this interest to our desired audience, we have established severals channels of communication by social media and public science papers.

Social medias are ideal ways of communication in delivery of both scien knowledge as well as personal updates demystifying the team as scary scientists. In particular Facebook and Twitter has been utilized attracting attention of over 150 followers on both medias indicating strong interest in our progress. In particular the updates has appealed to the upcoming generation of biotechnology students with the use of memes being funny as they refer to a caricatured stereotype with biotechnology references.

Life Science and Beyond Conference

Life Science and Beyond is an annual event organized by Society for Biological Engineering (SBE) at Technical University of Denmark. The aim of the conference is to promote different life science activities, helping in organisation of reasonable study plan and sharing a variety of experience between students.

The program of the event attracted over 100 curious students from Bachelor as well as Master degree with different biological and biotechnological backgrounds. As the event was hold in the main library of the university, many other students got involved into discussions on different stands and during final dinner.

One of the most popular ones was an iGEM stand where our team was able to share the knowledge about Synthetic Biology and its applications. We familiarized others with an idea of iGEM, focusing on open-sourcing, collaboration between people with different backgrounds and creating Biobricks. To increase an attraction of our stand, make people read our posters and talk to us, we prepared a quiz about iGEM competition as well as synthetic biology with some awards! After a few hours our hands were full of correctly filled-up questionnaires!

Definitely, we can say it was a success, as many of the participants showed great enthusiasm and interest in joining next iGEM 2016 competition as well as focusing on topics related to Synthetic Biology during their studies.

Becoming a Blue Dot Project

Our team has after a lot of work been accepted as an official Blue Dot Project at the Technical University of Denmark. This gesture infers that our university recognize the efforts we students put into the iGEM competition. This benefit the outreach potential of the iGEM idea to fellow students and raise awareness in the academic landscape. The increased focus on the iGEM competition promote the interest in participation increasing the academic level of selected participants of future teams.

“The name ’Blue Dot’ refers to the Earth, which - although it is huge - looks like a small blue dot when viewed from space. While big ideas can appear simple and tangible when seen from the outside, from the inside they are often rather intricate and complex. The name ’Blue Dot’ thus also refers to an engineer’s ability to remain focues and see the big picture while simultaneously delving into the details in order to solve problems and challenges.” DTU official site

Our titel can be found on the official Blue Dot Project website under the name DTU Biobuilders.

Ethic implications on society

Introduction

During outreaching activities such as the BioBusiness Summer School 2015 (link), important questions were raised about the ethics in relation to field of biotechnology. This sparked an inspiration in our iGEM team to raise the questions ourselves and analyze our project and educational elements in a bigger perspective. According to guidelines from the “European Commission, research proposals towards the Horizon 2020 funding” we contacted a local expert for guidance. A session was established with Bioethics specialist Martin Mose Bentzen from the Technical University of Denmark, to have a talk about ethical concerns of relevance in relation to our project. He highlighted numerous important aspects to consider and the team left the session with a clear direction to make an ethic self-assessment. From these considerations, our team identified the following aspects to be essential in the assessment of how our project may affect society:

• Bioethics
• Environmental ethics
• Ethical dilemmas in teaching of high schoolers

What have we created!?

The Synthesizer-project has many delicate elements, which could be analyzed for bioethical concerns. Our final product is a tool that allows any individual to design a synthesis of a desired product and help fellow scientists all around the world. With this in mind and the method being accessible for everyone, many crucial questions should be addressed - how do we as the creators make sure, our tool is not being used with a bad purpose? What would happen if the tool would be used to make disastrous findings? As inventors, are we directly related to someone's bad intentions or are we rather providing the tool? Ethically, would we be held accountable for any individual radical agenda? We have approached the subject by this assessment and believe in the importance of this initial precaution by raising thoughts of the precautionary principle - do we dare to release our product and how can we prevent its misuse? An obvious suggestion would be introduction of limitations in the presented features, limiting the use of the tool for products that are known toxic and the use with a bad intention. This could be implemented by an input blacklisting of NPRS complexes associated with toxin products. Still, these limitations could be insufficient in prevention of uncharacterized toxic products due to lack of prediction. However, engaging this topic by utilitarianism, we should not limit ourselves by these precautions before applying a risk-benefit analysis of individual usage. The outcome of the combined achievement of medical, social and financial gain should by default strongly overweight the risk at hand.

But… you work with GMO?!

Yes, as we work with GMO, biosafety is important to address the protection of the environment. Biosafety entails environment, health and safety, and ethical considerations would concern the correct handling of microorganisms. This ensures a safe lab environment and the prevention of microorganisms contamination or being released into nature with a negative influence. As distributers of the synthesizer tool, we cannot ensure certified safety standards when users apply our tool. As a preventive measure, out team has highlighted the importance of basic lab safety measures in the wiki safety page (ADD LINK) as one should always be prepared for any safety-compromised situation. In addition, our team facilitated the BioBrick workshop with an extensive safety introduction ensuring a basic understanding of safety to follow iGEM team of Denmark.

The element of teaching

While teaching high school students about synthetic biology – questions can be raised about the ethics and safety in the passing of mentioned knowledge. As these students are unfamiliar with in-depth knowledge about the particular scientific development in this field, they may not be aware of the unspoken ethic consensus. This adds layers of complexity and considerations to the teaching, as material, teaching methods and especially lab exercises should be under proper supervision.

An obvious concern is the element of biosecurity as our project facilitates the knowhow to manipulate GMO that potentially could be dangerous for human health. Ethical gray-area experiments could become a Trivial Trap as the line between “wrong” and “no harm, no foul” may blur out leaving the susceptible students prone to “the ends justify the means” in order to gain the respect from their supervisors. A transparency must be kept in the knowledge transition from teacher to student if utilitarianism is the prevailing mindset. This highlights the importance of open discussions on the particular topic as an integrated part of the teaching procedure and an encouragement for the students, that no question or concern is too little to be addressed.

Conclusion

The Synthesizer-project has many elements, which have been assessed ethically.  In this context of Synthetic Biology, we have briefly touched upon ethics in relation to safety and teaching. The tool does have the potential to compromise safety, and in terms of ethical conduct of research, our team is aware of possible usage not intended by us designers. We have also addressed ethical elements in our teaching and highlighted preventive measures. As the project is fairly young, we expect additional ethic problems to surface and as a consequence, we are prepared to continually assess the project for ethic dilemmas.