Team:Edinburgh/Practices/Experts
A Chat with Policy Experts
Coming away from the sandpit, we knew .
Indeed, while iGEM projects that attempt to "save the world" are met with little ethical opposition, it seemed that an iGEM team that tried to tackle a subject as taboo as drug use would meet resistance every step of the way. Nevertheless, we took the idea forward, perhaps driven by the romantic mantra "Edinburgh iGEM 2015: keeping drug addicts alive long enough to recover". Thus, it was time to get out in the real world and see whether this ideal was made of stone or sand.
We left the sandpit with interesting thoughts regarding the design of, and biology behind, our putative biosensor. In the case of design, we first imagined a device similar to that of a Gameboy with a biosensor as its processor: users would input a sample of their heroin and the device would output a simple text-based estimate of how much a user could inject without expecting to overdose.
As far as the biology, we knew we roughly had two options: we could construct either a cell-based or cell-free biosensor. Having a rough idea of the potential benefits and disadvantages of both, we set off on a mission to research the most viable option.