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Exchange Meeting with LZU-China

On July 16, 2015, we had exchange meeting with iGEM Team from Lanzhou University, LZU-China, at Hokkaido University. We each had a presentation on what project we were going to work on through the summer.

After that, we held a "nomikai", Japanese casual style party.

Synthetic Biology Regulation and Rights by Tec-Monterrey

Introduction

The effect of GMO to the enviroment has been raising a concern, since they disturb the biodiversity of our nature. To solve this, Cartagena protocol was adopted in 2000, Montreal. Cartagena protocol was adopted for that, ”In accordance with the precautionary approach contained in Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the objective of this Protocol is to contribute to ensuring an adequate level of protection in the field of the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health, and specifically focusing on transboundary movements.” and Japan aceceded into it in 2003.

This regulation about gene recombination is very important for us iGEMers, since we handle GMO in our daily experiments. Also, the yield of GMO crops has been increasing and the GMO crops are becoming more familiar to us. Therefore, futher understanding and discussion of the protocol is needed.

So we, Hokkaido University team, participated in online forum held by Tec_Guadalajara in Mexico.

Purpose of this forum

This online forum was held by Tec_Guadalajara in Mexico and for shaping policy for our discipline of biotechnology/synthetic biology. This online forum imitates the real discussion from parties and observers to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD, part of United Nations). Next conference and meeting of the Parties of the Cartagena Protocol will be taken place in Mexico, so they held this online forum like their government. Hokkaido University team participated in this forum and posted our opinions on every set topic.

Our opinions

We provided the following opinions to each Topic.

Topic1. Operational Definiton of Synthetic Biology

One team member said about definition that Synthetic Biology is the academic field whose object is synthesis of materials which is more useful than natural products for human beings by using some genes derived from different organisms. Another member said about Account for Synthetic Biology that because it becomes easy to investigate by standardizing various factors, you’ll get more chances and time to create new ideas. That is the benefit of Synthetic Biology.

In addition, another member proposed interesting analogy about difference between molecular biology and synthetic biology. That is, when you think about the recipe of delicious apple pie, there are two ways. One is going to the cake shop which is famous for delicious apple pie and guessing the recipe of that shop. The other is making apple pie by yourself, changing each step of the recipe and selecting the best one.

These two ways are applicable to investigation ways of biology. The former, reductive approach is applicable to molecular biology. Just guessing the recipe of apple pie is easy, however it may be bothersome to try to analysis the complex organisms at the molecular level.

And the latter, architectonic approach is applicable to synthetic biology. Because of making by yourself, the complete apple pie has infinite possibilities. In addition, if the recipe is standardized and shared by everyone, that delicious apple pie is available anywhere in the world. This philosophy is just Synthetic Biology.

Topic2. Benefits of an open source approach; who benefits?

A member said that all people who experiment with the use of plasmid vectors reap benefits. It's because by open source, the operations are simplified and become smoother. In addition, if world-wide standardization comes true, exchange of genetic parts‘ll become easier.

Another member said that common people or companies who have never studied biology so much reap benefits. It’s because, by open source, they feel something familiar to genetic modification technology and use this technology easier, common people will get much more chances to come up the ideas and possibilities to append new decisions to their projects or businesses by using genetic modification.

And another member point the basal matter, "anyway, now SynBio is not enough level to be suitable for the business. To overcome that matter, I think automatization of experiments is absolutely imperative. No matter how simplify operations of experiments by open source, if people who actually experiment don’t understand means or mechanisms of the operations, they can’t understand the whole context or may fail many times. If automatization of operations of experiments comes true, I think SynBio is put to practical use in a real sence.”

Conclusion

We had meaningful discussions about each topic and helped to enhance the contents of Human Practice of Tec_Guadalajara.

In addition, we had a meaningful opportunity to think of the regulations of GMO.

Answering questionnaires about modeling and experimentation of Aalto-Helsinki

Modeling plays a key role in our project and gives us useful predictions on whether our projects will work well. So in synthetic biology, we can say that modeling serves as a crucial link between the idea and realization of an engineered biological system.

In this year, Aalto-Helsinki team survey about modeling. So we, Hokkaido University team, help Aalto-Helsinki team by answering 10 questionnaires on below.

1. What team are you in?
2. What is your field of studies?
3. How long have you been studying?
4. Is your team doing any modeling? If yes, is there an assigned group for this task?
5. What kind of roles do you have in your project?
6. What were your expectations for combining modeling with biology? Was there something surprising?
7. What guided your model construction? (Your own prior knowledge, a team member's prior knowledge, your own research (research articles etc.), advisor's prior knowledge, other (please specify))
8. What challenges were there in terms of collaborating between fields?
9. How did you approach the collaboration challenges? Did you feel your approach worked? Why, why not?
10. What kind of communication was there between modeling and laboratory practitioners? Were there any challenges in this communication?
11. How did the modeling efforts have an effect on the wetlab work? If there was no effect, why not?
12. Do you think that your models depict the real phenomena, or do you treat them rather as mere mathematical tools?
13. Now that you know better, is there something you would have done differently?
14. Comments

Modeling is also important for us, so we not only helped to enhance the contents of Human Practice of Aalto-Helsinki team, but had a meaningful opportunity to think of the relationship between Modeling and Biology.

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