Team:Goettingen/Practices

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Human Practices

For our human practice we wanted to think about the implications associated with our Flexosome tool. We consulted Dr. Volka von Hoyningen-Huene about his professional perspective on our project. During the interview we talked about synthetic biology, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and a scenario with the Flexosome as an optimized product.

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

... is to construct new biological features from basic components, even if they are artificial components, such as reconstructed genetic information which is then expressed and produced as completely new functions.

GMOs

Any organism that has its genetic material altered by human influence. Not through breeding and selection but through molecular biology. They can be applied in industry, fuel, environment, health, energy and in the elaboration of nutritional products for example.

GMO’s worst case scenario

A worst case scenario can be found in science fiction films. I don’t think such a thing has ever happened. In a worst case scenario somebody would use your system in order to produce a very efficient poison as a misuse for war purposes. Such a complex protein could be put into water of a city and therefore cause damage without causing realisations.

GMOs perception

Publicly they have a bad reputation, but personally I see it more differentiated. I see the concern in the public of depending very strongly on individual firms like, e.g. Monsanto, in the total exploitation for commercial means rather than applications that pursues the society as a whole.

To remember: Dr. Volka von Hoyningen-Huene helped us to realize that one of the main points related to the implementation of this kind of synthetic biology project is the public opinion. It is fundamental to explain the project in a simple and accessible way, so non specialized people can understand it and therefore support it without the fear that comes from misinformation.