Team:Westminster/Practices
Human Practices
Questions were answered by Shengchang Su, PhD. Director at Microbial Robotics.
Website : http://microbialrobotics.com/Business
1) Are there any national or international laws that we should consider when dealing with genetically modified organisms?
Of course “Yes”! GMOs are subjected to all federal and governmental laws and regulations, which vary from nation to nation. Below are two links for some information on GMO legislations in the EU and US, respectively.
http://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/gmo/new/legislation/index_en.htm
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/restrictions-on-gmos/usa.php
2) What are the key points of your business model and how does it differ from other microbial fuel cell companies?
Microbial Robotics is not MFC company but has done some work on MFC development. Our current business model is open innovation, open science, open technology and open business. If you are interested in our business model, feel free to let us know.
3) What are the 3 most important issues a synthetic biology company in its infancy should consider?
Product market, research funding, team and business plan.
4) How to prevent our project idea from infringement when we are introducing it to potential sponsors without any secured intellectual property protections at this stage?
In general, signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) will protect you from infringement.
5) How much does biocontainment effect the feasibility/success of their products? Is it a necessary factor in determining the success of the product? Biocontainment provides a layer of protection and makes your products better and competitive if biosafety concern exists, but is not a must in determining the success of the product.
Ethics
1) Ethically, are there fundamental issues with creating new species?
Yes. It is hard to predict what new species will bring to the environment and human beings in the long term. Once the evolutionarily established balance is disrupted, it will be a disaster.
2) How would you answer the question: ‘Is not the experimentation of transgenics playing God?’
No. God endows the human beings with talents to explore the nature and live in harmony with nature.
MFC
1) How to ensure the produced water from MFC is safe to use, since the sensors that has been used in previous researches to detect presence of toxicants in water systems always has indicated low rate of detection or a failure?
Try different sensors or increase the level of detection sensitivity?
2) How to ensure a continuously operating microfluidic MFC (steady current) in contrast to a batch operation of an MFC ? It is a challenging question.
Technically, it is difficult to operate MFC continuously with steady current output in comparison with the other.
Synthetic amino acids-dependent genomically recoded organisms. (from google drive).
iGEM teams are unique and leading the field because they "go beyond the lab" to imagine their projects in a social/environmental context, to better understand issues that might influence the design and use of their technologies.
Teams work with students and advisors from the humanities and social sciences to explore topics concerning ethical, legal, social, economic, safety or security issues related to their work. Consideration of these Human Practices is crucial for building safe and sustainable projects that serve the public interest.
For more information, please see the Practices Hub.
Note
You must fill out this page in order to be considered for all awards for Human Practices:
- Human Practices silver medal criterion
- Human Practices gold medal criterion
- Best Integrated Human Practices award
- Best Education and Public Engagement award
Some Human Practices topic areas
- Philosophy
- Public Engagement / Dialogue
- Education
- Product Design
- Scale-Up and Deployment Issues
- Environmental Impact
- Ethics
- Safety
- Security
- Public Policy
- Law and Regulation
- Risk Assessment
What should we write about on this page?
On this page, you should write about the Human Practices topics you considered in your project, and document any special activities you did (such as visiting experts, talking to lawmakers, or doing public engagement).
Inspiration
Read what other teams have done:
Integrated Human Practices
Do you want to be considered for the Best Integrated Human Practices award? Make it easy for the judges to find any wiki content that is relevant to this prize. Highlight this content with a header or separate section.
Education and Public Engagement
Do you want to be considered for the Best Education and Public Outreach award? Make it easy for the judges to find any wiki content that is relevant to this prize. Highlight this content with a header or separate section.