Team:UCL/Practices
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In Mind the Gut, we are determined to fight the stigma associated with mental health by raising awareness of the physiological nature of disorders such as depression and anxiety. We're directly tackling this through the science sprouting from of our lab work: by drawing the focus to the physicochemical connection between gut microbiota and the brain for the treatment mental health disorders.
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Background
We've been involved in discussions with patients, practitioners,scientists and volunteers in charities to inquire about mental health issues. We also plan to use this as an opportunity to create awareness for the gut-brain axis which is quite a nascent field of research. This helps us ensure the relevance of our project to patients. We've organized events in collaboration with artists, museums and mental health organisations in order to start discussions with the general public and incorporate their ideas into our project. As of now there are two aspects that are needed to be considered:
- Firstly, a large part of scientific research is not accessible to the general public due to technical language and jargon. This barrier needs to be overcome in order to inform the public about the physiology of mental health and to help the patients understand their condition.
- Secondly, patients taking medication (e.g. for depression) must increase their dose in controlled, regular intervals. This is an issue we will consider when building the genetic circuit for our biobricks.
Events
The Dragon Cafe, Mental Fight ClubWe are currently organising an event with the Mental Fight Club in Southwark, London. The Dragon Café is a weekly event in the Crypt of St George the Martyr Church. It is open to all, but is especially catered towards those struggling with mental health issues or patients from St. Thomas Hospital. Our one-off event will consist of a presentation and a Q&A about our project.
We will bring the prestigious photographer Graham Miller as our special guest, who will showcase “The Most Important people in the World”, a collection of images in which he captures mental health and the ethical issues around mental health.
Open Mind Night
In the evening of the 10th of September the UCL iGEM team will be organising a night dedicated to the everyday battles that are faced against mental health conditions and the stigmas associated with them. We will be hosting a range of performances including stand-up comedy, poetry, fine art, musical, and theatrical performances and talks that will give us all a peek into the lives and stories of the people that fight mental health stigma everyday, including scientists, doctors and artists.
Furthermore, we will be fundraising for CoolTan mental health charity and all donations will serve to improve the wellbeing of people with cognitive impairments.
Interviews
We have been been involved in a number of discussions with leading scientists and healthcare professionals in the field of synthetic biology and mental health.
The Dragon Cafe, Mental Fight Club
We have contacted the mental health charity, YoungMinds UK, to widen our perception about mental health issues. This charity is catered towards students and young people with mental health issues. We are currently planning an interactive event to engage directly with these people and present our project.
Art and design
Mood enhancement CollectionThrough our art and design we aimed to analyse and explore the future implications of delivering genetically modified bacteria to possibly enhance our bodies and minds. Furthermore, we wanted to bring our project to the general public, by creating a collection of pictures with potential products that could be manufactured to deliver our genetically enhanced bacteria.
- We collaborated with bioartists Anna Dumitriu and Heather Mac to produce a range of new products for the Hypersymbiont Enhancement Salon collection. Anna Dumitriu is a renowned visual artist whose works blurs the boundaries between art and science with a strong interest in microbiology, synthetic biology and art/science ethics.
- Anna used our engineered E.coli overexpressing serotonin to develop a fun and creative collection of everyday products containing the psychobiotic that makes people ‘happier’. In order to do so we shipped the probiotic strain E.coli Nissle containing the tryptophan hydroxylase expressing plasmid to The University of Sussex, where Anna based her work.
- The GM E.coli was then freezed dried in order to sparkle this ‘shiny dust’ on the toothpaste and lipstick, while live bacteria was used for the tabs and jellies. The result has been an amazing collection of products that greatly show the possibilities of synthetic biology, particularly by manufacturing treatments to improve human health.
Ethics
This year, UCL iGEM team has decided to take a lead in debating the implications of our project and engaging with the public to address the ethical concerns raised by synthetic biology. Our team has therefore been looking deeply into the ethics of synthetic biology, particularly when it is applied to human health, as nowadays multiple social and ethical challenges are arising as a result of the development and expansion of this promising field.
General public surveyWe wanted to know the general public perception on the possibility of manufacturing probiotics containing engineered bacterial strains, and what their view on the ethics of this procedure and synthetic biology in general was. Furthermore, we asked them what they thought the future implications and concerns of synthetic biology could be and whether they believed that it would be beneficial for society or not. In order to do so we prepared a short survey for people to fill in through social media, and then we analysed the results and built the statistics.
Our survey was translated into 5 different languages including Spanish, French, Portuguese and German as we believed that this would help us reach a broader range of people and therefore provide us with more significant data.
Knowing the public perception in a novel and sometimes controversial field such as synthetic biology will allow us to tackle some of the ethical questions and concerns raised by society in order to maintain the public legitimacy and support.
UCL Ethics
We have been working closely with UCL Ethics to make sure our project met the requirements set by our university regarding the safeguarding of rights, safety, dignity and well-being of research participants. All our interviews and video assays were approved by the UCL Chair of the Departamental Ethics Comitee. Previous to the interview the participants were informed about the nature of the research, the format of the questions they will be asked, their content, their rights, and how we would treat the information they provided us. Moreover, we distributed Information sheets and Consent forms to all participants to ensure that they provided fully consent before participating in the interviews.