Team:Washington/Practices

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Educational Outreach

Participation in Local STEM Events

At the University of Washington, we believe that iGEM is as much about educating the public about synthetic biology as it is about practicing it. Our team is passionate about fostering a love for science and engineering in younger members of our community and engaging with parents about cutting edge solutions to real-world problems. Every year, we volunteer at local science fairs and STEM events, sharing our research and promoting interest in the biological sciences.

This year, we worked to further the reach of our programs by visiting more events and creating more engaging exhibits. To this end, we developed a set of hands-on activities mainly geared towards 3rd grade through 6th grade students. We asked students to help us solve a fictional mystery, in which a famous synthetic biologist had been murdered and students could help us identify the killer based on three pieces of evidence. Dubbed “CSI: Seattle,” our exhibit allowed students to try their hand at DNA purification from strawberries, identifying fluorescent proteins and chromoproteins in yeast and bacteria, and performing a pH test. You can view the worksheet from our activity here.

We hosted exhibits at the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair in Bremerton, the Shoreline STEM Festival, the Edmonds STEM Expo, Sanislo and Bennett Elementary Science Fairs, and UW's Engineering Discovery Days. At each, our activity was well-received and allowed us to inform both students and parents about our work in paper diagnostics and synthetic biology. We were also able to adapt our curriculum for different audiences, downsizing for smaller fairs and emphasizing different aspects of our experiments for different age groups. At some events, such as the Shoreline STEM Festival and Edmonds STEM Expo, we were able to reach out to high school students who wanted first-hand information about college STEM programs.

Community Engagement

Experiment.com Crowdfunding Campaign

Recently, iGEM has taken steps to engage with its rapidly-growing group of alumni. At the University of Washington, we are following this lead and are working to create relationships with our team’s alumni. Thus, we were excited when Cindy Wu and Denny Luan, alumni of the Washington 2010 team, reached out to us about fundraising through their company, Experiment.com. This platform specifically caters to science projects, allowing independent researchers or research teams like us to gain funding without grants. This campaign allowed us to connect with alumni and other like-minded scientists, and gave us the opportunity to share more details of our project with our networks and the broader scientific community.

USEED Crowdfunding Campaign

In order to raise funds for our research and conference expenses, we also worked with USEED, an innovative crowdfunding platform that contracts with the University of Washington to fund student projects. This platform is unusual in that it allows people to make non-profit donations and 100% of funds raised go towards the project. Through this campaign, we were not only able to ensure that our students could move forward in their research and attend the Giant Jamboree, but we were also able to engage our community in a dialogue about our research. While many view science as an elite field only accessible to those who study it for many years, we wanted to connect our friends and family to our work and show that it can help solve problems that we all face on a daily basis.

Running this campaign also forced us to build the entrepreneurial skills necessary to transfer science from the laboratory to the people that it could most benefit. We used videos, writing, blogs, and social media to communicate to our shared vision of the beneficial role of genomic engineering in our community and across the world.

Inspiration

As a team located in Seattle, Washington, seafood is a common culinary delight, but our close proximity to the ocean makes us very aware of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). This June, many west coast newspapers reported on the largest west coast toxic algal bloom to date. As climate change affects water temperatures, scientists expect to see more frequent and widespread algal blooms. However, after doing some initial research, we found that current testing methods are expensive, time consuming, and inaccessible to consumers, vendors, and recreational shellfish hunters. Thus, we wanted to find out if a fast-acting and affordable shellfish toxin biosensor would be useful to the shellfish industry, and how we could use synthetic biology to create such a sensor.

In order to evaluate the need for a sensor the community, we spoke with government biotoxin labs, shellfish growers, and local businesses specializing in seafood; all three parties confirmed that there was a significant need for a portable diagnostic test for the most common toxins, such as saxitoxin and domoic acid. We also discussed our ideas with members of the public at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, which specializes in seafood and is a popular place for tourists to sample local cuisine.

While our project is still in the early developmental stages, it is feasible that our biosensor could be further developed and refined into a functional shellfish biotoxin sensor - a biosensor that could be cheaper, faster, more portable, and more accessible than current detection methods.

Integrated Human Practices

Our team talked with local experts in the shellfish industry to listen to their thoughts on the current state of biotoxin testing and have them evaluate our biosensor idea. The response was very positive from those we spoke with.

We first spoke with the lead biotoxin specialist at the Washington Department of Health Shellfish Program Division who was very interested in our research. Upon our return from the Giant Jamboree in Boston, he will be giving us a tour of our local FDA lab facilities so that we can gain a better understanding of current testing methods and the standards that must be met to ensure absence of toxins in a grower’s stock. Because as undergraduates, we are not equipped to test toxin detection systems we develop on actual biotoxins, the opportunity to partner with a government testing facility would significantly advance our product.

Noting that algal blooms do not only affect the Pacific Northwest region, we next spoke with a grower from Hog Island Oyster, a growing operation and shellfish distributer based near San Francisco. He was able to inform us about the problems he faces when sending his oysters for testing. In California, all testing is done at a government facility, which currently provides saxitoxin screening free of charge. However, this means that funds are being diverted from other important government services, and may not be available if revenue decreases. Screening for domoic acid, another common toxin, is $60-100 per sample, and is done by PCR. Cutting down on costs both to industry and the local government would relieve a significant burden from the the shellfish community. Additionally, testing generally requires 24 to 48 hours to complete, decreasing efficiency in his business. Thus, he was very interested in our idea for a paper diagnostic device that would allow him to perform testing himself, cut down on cost, and save time. However, he emphasized the importance of accuracy in such testing.

We also talked about the potential impact our device could have on the environment if disposed of with live yeast and media for them to grow on. To prevent our engineered organisms from entering the environment, we are planning to engineer a killswitch into our system. To minimize the effect of waste generated by a disposable device, we are also looking into modifying our device to use mostly biodegradable materials.

Finally, we spoke to a seafood manager at Uwajimaya, a popular local Asian grocery store that specializes in seafood, which has been in the Pacific Northwest for over 80 years. His most significant concern was the safety of his customers, who he feels are at risk because of the potential to miss algal blooms during standard testing. While the government tests for the most common toxins, there are many less prevalent toxins that can appear in our waters. Furthermore, many shellfish growers expose their stock to multiple growing sites in order to enhance the flavor. While this makes their products more appealing, it also means that tracking the location of shellfish is difficult, and the animals have more potential to be exposed to toxins.

The manager also lamented that as soon as a toxin scare or red tide is reported, he almost instantaneously loses up to 50% of his business. With a quick, inexpensive biosensor, every group of shellfish could easily be identified as safe for human consumption. This grocery, as well as many others, uses filters to protect against harmful bacteria, but biotoxin screening is not available to them. Interestingly, the manager noted that because of the potential for harmful algal blooms, he personally does not eat shellfish during the summer months. However, he did say that with an individual biosensor available he would be willing to eat shellfish again during the summer.

By speaking with shellfish and biotoxin experts in government and industry, we were able to confirm that there is a significant need for cheaper, faster, and portable biosensor for detecting shellfish toxins.

Education and Public Engagement

At the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle, we talked to members of the public about shellfish toxins, our project, and synthetic biology in general. Overall, we had a positive response from the public and were able to inform many about the importance of synthetic biology and the potential impact of our research.

Karen Plotke, a New Jersey farmer visiting Seattle, believes that any device that can prevent people from getting sick or even dying is a useful tool. When our team explained that our theoretical shellfish biosensor would be cheaper and faster than current options, she was even more impressed with the concept. As for synthetic biology, she knew it had something to do with using technology and biology.

Mallory Van Abbema, a social work student at the University of Washington and a Washington native, loved the idea of our device but wanted to know more about how it would help people. She was fascinated to hear that our final device would be easy to use and inexpensive so that anyone going out harvesting shellfish could buy our device and use it at the catch site. This would allow people an added level of safety to the current precautions taken by local agencies like NOAA and the CDC.