Human practices
When deciding what our human practices would entail, we faced the dilemma of what issues concerning the society are most urgent to address and by which criteria they should be chosen. At the end, we settled on focusing on four main goals: connecting to the professionals, reaching out to public, engaging the youth, and addressing the ethics of both synthetic biology in general and our project specifically.
CONNECING TO THE PROFESSIONALS
We decided to present our people to the professionals with experience in research and the industry of biofuel and waste elimination, as well as to the other teams who are competing in iGEM in 2015. With this spirit we have written several articles about ourselves, our project and the status of synthetic biology in our country for the Newsletter of iGEM Amoy University team. We held a video conference with Aalto Helsinki iGEM team, which is also working on the biofuel problematic. We discussed our respective approaches to the problem and the mechanism of our solutions. We also presented the project to researchers at the National Chemistry Institute in Ljubljana.CONNECTING TO THE PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRY
Our project concerning turning organic waste into biofuel is one with a great potential for development and for eventual industrial stage. With that in mind we have realized that we would have to visit a real life company that already does something similar, so that we can better imagine the scale and equipment with which our project would eventually work. There are no cleaning plants using bacteria yet in Slovenia and our project is unique in that respect, so we have decided to visit a somewhat similar company. We went to an algae water cleaning plant AlgEn, built within the European project AlgaeBioGas, which aims to clean the liquid part of the digestate sediment from nearby gasworks (dealing with processing slaughterhouse waste) to such extent that the water will be able to flow directly to local communal water distribution system. This is the only outside installation of this size in Europe. They explained their work and research to us and showed us around the plant, carefully explaining the purpose of equipment on each stage of water purification, as well as showing us their control room and the systems they use to monitor the process. Having thus far only worked on a much smaller scale in the laboratory we were fascinated to see the size of the pool the algae grow in and the main computer monitoring and adjusting the parameters, which helped us imagine how our project could eventually turned out. We explained our own work and what we hoped to accomplish and were given some pointers by the experienced researchers who deal with similar projects every day.Slika 1: Visiting AlgEn To sliko bom naredila v večji kolaž, samo da najdem še 2 dobri sliki
REACHING OUT TO GENERAL PUBLIC
Reaching out to general public, we were faced with two greater problems: public ignorance concerning synthetic biology and the negative attitude about GMOs. Explaining our project to friends and family, we realized that people are mostly completely unaware of what synthetic biology even is, let alone anything more specific, which is understandable. Humanities and social sciences relate closely and noticeably to our everyday life, and are therefore more integrated into the general education of citizens of Slovenia. Understanding science, however, especially something as peculiar to the general public as synthetic biology is, often requires very specific knowledge that is thought at universities but is less easily accessible otherwise. For instance, the news on national television covers topics such as politics, international relations and culture every evening, but science is not often mentioned. Besides just the problem of being unaware, this minimal representation of science also means it is often not founded well, which affects the future of our nation more than we might realize. Moreover, people who are more aware of genetic engineering and synthetic biology, often have a rather unfavorable attitude towards it, mostly focusing on the potentially negative sides of it, but are usually unaware of the positive sides, such as production of insulin, artemisinin and other drugs that were made much more affordable and safe precisely by the use of genetic engineering. For these two reasons we have decided one of our main priorities would be firstly introducing synthetic biology to society and secondly addressing the public concerns regarding it.TRADITIONAL MEDIA
We realized that the way to reach the most people would be by traditional media: newspapers, television, radio and internet platforms. Therefore, we have contacted and invited reporters and journalists to both our labs, showed them our work and results and talked about our project. More importantly we talked about the importance of natural sciences and synthetic biology in particular to the society, especially when dealing with issues like health, nutrition and the environment. Our efforts proved fruitful, as we have managed to be featured and seen many times. We had an interview for Radio Študent, where our team member talked about the iGEM competition and importance of biofuel. You can hear the full recording (in Slovene) here. We had two interviews for evening news programs, talking about engagement of youth in sciences, biobutanol and going from idea to a publicly available functioning product in synthetic biology.dodaj slike člankov
http://www.planet.si/novice/slovenija/video-kuhinjski-odpadki-niso-za-v-kos.htmlhttp://www.24ur.com/novice/slovenija/nasi-najboljsi-dijaki-raziskujejo-kako-iz-odpadkov-proizvesti-biogorivo.html
https://www.dnevnik.si/1042719132
Slika 2. Interview for a TV station +slika od članka v časopisu
You can see us on evening news Planet Danes on PLANET TV, which is viewed by 65200 people, here. You can see us on evening news 24ur on POP TV, which is viewed by 194000 people, here. There was an article about us in the daily newspaper Dnevnik, as well as the Sunday Nedeljski Dnevnik, read by approximately 319000 people. We talked about the upcoming Giant Jamboree, our progress on the project and our motivation for choosing natural science as a career path and applying to iGEM. You can see the contributions here. In an effort to connect with as many people as possible, we also published a piece about our work and techniques of synthetic biology on a popular internet platform Metina lista, which you can see here.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Traditional media is mostly aimed to audiences between 18 and 60 years of age, but we decided not to be bound by the limitations of traditional media, and expanded our campaign to social media as well, which is read mostly by our peers, but more and more by the rest of the public as well. Most read was our facebook page (iGEM HS Slovenia), where we published weekly updates on our project and interesting articles about advancements in synthetic biology we found as well as pictures and anecdotes from the lab. We also created a twitter account (iGEM HS Slovenia) and a web site for sponsors and other people interested in the details of our work.PRESENTING TO POLITICIANS AND LEGISLATORS
While presenting our project to the public is indeed very rewarding, we also found it important to explain the benefits of synthetic biology to the people who hold the most power in our country, and are therefore most able to make a difference quickly. We were fortunate enough to be able to present our project to the highest officials in Slovenia. Our team representatives attended the 2nd Conference of Young Researchers of Slovenia and Students from Abroad and Slovenia, the honorary sponsor of which is the president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor. Slika 3: Attending the conference at the presidential palace We were even prouder to be able to personally present the aim of our research to the prime minister of Slovenia, Dr. Miro Cerar and to be able to talk to him about the future of science in Slovenia, the involvement of students in research and about the importance of supporting the inspiring youth for every country. We were overjoyed to see that the prime minister takes such sincere interest in areas we are also passionate about and that he understands the importance support for the youth in science can make. While it is certainly very satisfying to work in a laboratory, such interactions where you can see what a difference you can make are very rewarding as well. Being able to open someone's mind, but even more so when is the prime minister's mind, to the important issues of science and of support for the young scientists is certainly a memorable experience. Slika 4: Presenting to the prime ministerENGAGING THE YOUTH
As young people with great passion for science we found it very important to engage with other young people. Presenting synthetic biology to the young has the advantage that they were usually not already influenced by the negative connotations the words genetic engineering bring with them and are thus able to listen to us with open minds. It goes without saying that we found it important, but also very fulfilling to present our project to our peers and connect with them trough common interests in science. (There is more to our efforts in presenting synthetic biology to the young, thought. Worrisome statistics already show, that the young have become less interested in natural science in the recent years, instead choosing to focus on social sciences, which provide a broad base for acquisition and processing of experiences and knowledge in real life. High school students are choosing to take final exams (Slovenian Matura) in natural sciences less, in favor of more socially engaged disciplines, like history and psychology. Given our own passion for science we are afraid that the students were not shown the beauty and usefulness of science.-če bi našla kakšne dejanske podatke, da tole tudi podprem) We took the saying Children are our future to the heart and made sure to present our project to children and teenagers as well as adults. We made sure to not only talk about synthetic biology and our project, but also why science is so important, what had drawn us to it and our experience with it.PRESENTATIONS IN HIGH SCHOOLS
We had presentations in many secondary school institutions across the country, talking about our experience and how exciting our project is to our peers. We mostly presented this to students in 3rd and 4th year of high school, who are just choosing what subjects they should take their exams in and what university they should apply to. We were hoping to show them that natural sciences are an exciting and rewarding career path and to inspire and encourage them to pursue science, if that was their wish. We were glad to see that the students were indeed interested and engaged with us during and after presentations, asking us questions about the project, synthetic biology, the iGEM competition and our experience with research.Slika 5: Gymnasium Trbovlje gave us their T-shirts as a thanks
Some of the presentations were in Slovene, but some, intended to the students pursuing the International Baccalaureate, were in English. We had presentations in the following high schools and secondary educational institutions: - Bežigrad Grammar School - Diocesan Classical Gymnasium - Gymnasium Kranj - Gymmasium Trbovlje -Jurij Vega Grammar School -First Grammar School Celje -Novo Mesto Grammar School Slika 6: The high school where we presented iGEM
PRESENTATIONS AT SCIENCE FESTIVALS
We made presentations for the wider public as well. Wanting to interact with youth interested in science, we arranged to present ourselves and iGEM at science festivals. We spend a day at a booth at ZOTKA's talents science festival. ZOTKS (Association for Technical Culture of Slovenia) is a society that organizes a research competition for high school and elementary school children every year. After submitting their research, the finalists are honored and given their awards at ZOTKA's talents, where they also present their research. Other societies and people with interesting research to show are invited as well, and the event attracts many visitors: finalists, other competitors, their families, important researchers, members of Association for Technical Culture and politicians. We were glad to be able to present our work and the whole field of synthetic biology to many aspiring young scientists.Slika 7: Our presentation at Sciencetival
We decided to present our project to children as well, and were fortunate enough to be able to make a presentation at another science festival aimed at younger children and their parents. Hiša eksperimentov (The House of Experiments) is a museum trying to appeal science to kids. The museum is full of fun experiments (giant bubbles, a bed of nails, dancing non-Newtonian fluid, visual tricks etc.) that explain the basic concepts of natural sciences (such as surface tension, the distribution of forces, electricity, friction…) to young children in an entertaining way. The museum also has exciting curses, such as ''Eggology'', ''Bubblelogy'' and ''Ice creamology'' to interest children in science. Every year the museum organizes Znanstival (Sciencetival), a festival of sciences for families with children, where we presented iGEM and our project as well. We found this presentation particularly challenging, as the children do not understand more technical concepts of synthetic biology, but we were able to explain it to them by using metaphors like building a world with legos and cutting and pasting collages.
Slika 8: Children loved our hydrogen mobile
Ethics & synthetic biology
Synthetic biology strives towards using engineering principles to the practice of biology and makes the development of biological systems possible, including development of entire organisms, which don’t exist in nature and serve solely specified human purposes. Synthetic biology relies on genetic engineering techniques of recombinant DNA that were first developed in the 1970s, but synthetic biology hopes to bring these techniques many steps forward. It aims at the development of genetic sequences that can serve as standardized modules and be used in standardized platform organisms to cause those organisms to exhibit predictable behaviours.
This rapidly advancing technology raises ethical questions about benefits and harms that have not been thoroughly addressed and are subject to a worldwide debate. For example, many countries of the EU are attempting to completely ban the use of GMOs in agriculture and food, but on the other hand, many other countries such as the USA are growing more and more genetically modified crops. Synthetic organisms raise questions about public health, environmental contamination, and even abuse. This technology could be very dangerous, if it ever falls into the wrong hands, since it could be used for bioterrorism. Other concerns that have a more religious nature are about the very idea of creating synthetic organisms. These tap into our instincts about what is natural and what is our relationship to the natural world, but also about the intrinsic value of human creativity and industry.
But like most things, not even synthetic biology is purely black and white. It also opens door to numerous practical applications of living organisms, especially bacteria. It could make our lives easier, safer and better and could even help us to do more to preserve the environment. Medicine, agriculture, waste treatment, fuel production and pharmaceutics are just some of the possible are where synthetic biology could mean an enormous breakthrough and a solution to many of our problems. One possible invention it could bring is personalized medicine tailored to each individual. These would be more efficient than normal medicines and would also cause fewer side effects. Also, in most cases these applications would require GMOs, safely trapped in bioreactors; therefore the fear of these organisms being released into naturel is redundant.
Photo: Debate on subject of Ethics of Synthetic biology
At the end, both the risks and benefits have to be taken into consideration when deciding on ethical questions of this kind and the decision should be made simply by determining which prevail.