Team:Exeter/Human Practices

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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices"; style="color:#57b947">Human Practices Introduction</a>
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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices"; style="color:#57b947">Human Practices Home</a>
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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/panel"; style="color:#57b947">Human Practices Panel</a>
       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/panel"; style="color:#57b947">Human Practices Panel</a>
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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/biosecure"; style="color:#57b947">Biosecurity and Data Mis-use</a>
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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/discussion"; style="color:#57b947">Human Practices Discussion</a>
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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/lande"; style="color:#57b947">Life and the Environment</a>
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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/biosecure"; style="color:#57b947">Biosecurity and Data Misuse</a>
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      <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/lande"; style="color:#57b947">Life and the Environment</a>
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       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/impact"; style="color:#57b947">Impact and the Future</a>
       <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/impact"; style="color:#57b947">Impact and the Future</a>
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<p><b>Introduction</b></p>
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<p> </p>
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<p>Human practices are the ethical, societal, environmental and business impacts that our synthetic biology project has. Everything that could be affected by our project has been considered and the benefits and risks to each area decided. From the beginning we imagined how our project may impact upon society, evolving our project with human practices in mind. It is one of the most important aspects of our project and determines the success of our project if it were to continue forward.</p>
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<p>Only by knowing the reality of our project could we know its potential for impact, so one key aim of our human practices exploration has been to investigate this possibility.</p><br>
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    <p><b>Panel</b></p>
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    <p>The panel involved inviting specialists from each of the subject areas within human practices to listen to our presentation and then follow with a question and answer
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    session. Organisation began by finding the most suitable members for the panel and personally inviting the panellists via email correspondence:
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    <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Collaborators#Richard Owen" style="color:#57B947"><u>Professor Richard Owen</u></a> who holds
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    the Chair in Responsible Innovation at the <a href="http://business-school.exeter.ac.uk/" style="color:#57B947"><u>University of Exeter Business School</u></a>,
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    <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Collaborators#Harriet Sjerps-Jones" style="color:#57B947"><u>Harriet Sjerps-Jones</u></a>, whose role is coordinating informal and
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    formal learning opportunities for sustainability, and
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    <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Collaborators#Rick Titball" style="color:#57B947"><u>Professor Rick Titball</u></a>, Director of research for the
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    <a href="http://biosciences.exeter.ac.uk/" style="color:#57B947"><u>School of Biosciences</u></a> who used to work for <i>DSTL</i>. We then advertised our panel in the
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    biosciences department with fliers, provided refreshments to tempt people, so that others may come along and form the audience.</p>
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    <p>After the panellists had asked their questions we involved the wider audience and received their feedback also. This meant that rather than having an open discussion with the
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<p>Our project is a gateway to developing technology that will revolutionise glycobiology and consequently have a huge impact on all levels of society. The potential impact of novel polysaccharides on medical, industrial and social sectors is vast and it is this we have been considering. We wanted to explore our ideas and whether they were commercially possible, testing if our idea had genuine, real world impact. We engaged with industry-leading businesses including the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), a leading local food manufacturer, ISCA Biochemicals Ltd. and Avon Cosmetics. Please see <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/impact";style="color:#57b947">here</a> to read more about our experiences with this. Discussing our project and the importance of synthetic biology has emphasised the relevance of this work: even at the level of an undergraduate competition project it is clearly thought to be of significance to industry.</p><br>
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    room and inviting the panellists to simply attend, they were given the floor first to begin with. This provided more structure to the discussion and led the way with questions
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    and answers, giving the panellists the opportunity to first provide their professional opinion so that the discussion was kept as relevant as possible. </p>
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<p>A new generation of young people is needed to drive a responsible, boundary-seeking future in synthetic biology and we believe that we have passed on a legacy by inspiring several work experience students over the summer. You can read the thoughts of our work experience students <a href="http://medblog.medlink-uk.net/chrishack/";style="color:#57b947">here</a> and <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Outreach/WorkExp";style="color:#57b947">here</a>. We engaged with the public through Cafe Scientifique, talking about the impact of synthetic biology and by using our project as one of the examples, we were able to get direct feedback on this. Our write up for this is <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Outreach/cafe"; style="color:#57b947">here</a>. We ran an A-level master class about the power of synthetic biology and caught the imagination of more than 80 students who had the chance to explore potential projects and impacts. Please find out more about this <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Outreach/alevel"; style="color:#57b947">here</a>. We have engaged the interest of people from all walks of life, from school children to industry leading companies, such as those mentioned above. We believe that synthetic biology is more than just the science. Synthetic biology incorporates all elements of human practices.</p>
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    <p><b>Discussions</b></p>
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    <p><a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Collaborators#David Parker" style="color:#57B947"><u>David Parker</u></a> from <i>Shell</i> first introduced us to the business
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    considerations of our project and helped to shape our thoughts on where our project could go in the business sector. We discussed product yields, as the more polysaccharide
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    produced the more money we could make. Organisms use most of the sugar for themselves and would only produce about 1% of our desired polysaccharide.  Bacteria are better as they
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    don’t have compartmentalisation, have faster growth and higher yield but how do you control their fermentation, considering antibiotics kill the host. We discussed alternative
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    methods of producing our polysaccharides including using the bacteria to instead produce the enzymes and isolating these.</p>
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    <br>
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    <p>David Parker also introduced us to marketing considerations, who our competitors would be and, since we don’t have any and are filling a niche, which would benefit from our
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    new technology. <b>David Ion</b> from a local food manufacturer discussed with us the business applications of our products to their industry but
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    pointed out the current difficulties of introducing GM products into food products. Their interest was primarily in the cholesterol reducing properties of cyclodextrin and we
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    considered how it might be possible to treat their food ingredients and then remove cyclodextrin so a GM product wasn’t in their final merchandise. Unfortunately we are a long
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    way off of using our products in the food industry due to the restrictions to GM products and the barriers to any food ingredient from a food safety aspect.</p>
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    <p>Professor Rick Titball and <b>Dr. Timothy Atkins</b> from <i>DSTL</i> met and discussed the vaccine application to our project. The benefits to producing polysaccharide
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    vaccines includes a reduced immune response to the adjuvant and also we are not introducing attenuated or dead bacteria and so people are unlikely to become ill from taking the
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    vaccine but are still protected against the disease. This improves upon current vaccines and also provides the opportunity to treat a wider range of diseases and improve public
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    health.</p>
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    <p>The meeting with <i>DSTL</i> led us to a discussion with <b>Dr. Andrew Watts</b>, head of <a href="http://www.glythera.com/" style="color:#57B947"><u>Glythera</u></a>, who
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    pointed out a technology in development that could improve upon our polysaccharide vaccines by binding to a protein they are developing that increases B cell activation 10,000
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    fold. This would improve the efficacy of our vaccines. He also pointed out to us that even though there weren’t enough promoters for the control of all our glycosyltranferases,
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    there is the opportunity of producing NOT and NOR gates to introduce more variability to expression or potential to look at more downstream expression effectors such as protein
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    modifications.</p> 
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    <p>Our regular meetings with <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Collaborators#Sabina Leonelli" style="color:#57B947"><u>Dr. Sabina Leonelli</u></a> also highlighted the
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    ethical issues surrounding our iGEM project. Specifically, questions over data mis-use of our technology versus open source ethos of iGEM were raised as well as ethical issues
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    over human intervention of natural life-forms such as <i>E.coli</i> that we are using to build our technology.</p>
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    <p>Frequent meetings with <i>Greenpeace</i> with <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Collaborators#David Santillo" style="color:#57B947"><u>Dr. David Santillo</u></a> and
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    <a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Collaborators#Janet Cotter" style="color:#57B947"><u>Dr. Janet Cotter</u></a> allowed us to adjust our project to minimise
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    environmental risks if our GMO and/or high-quality polysaccharide products were to be released into the environment. These issues were implemented both throughout this project
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    and beyond the iGEM competition.</p>
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    <br>
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    <p>The combination of discussions with professionals of their fields, the human practice panel held early on in our project and the continued development of our project
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    alongside human practice considerations has enabled us to consider all aspects of human practices concerned with our project. We have been able to develop human practices
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    alongside our project so they evolved together.</p>
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   <font face="Verdana" color="#57b947" size="3"><a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/panel"; style="color:#57b947"><u>Human Practices Panel >></u></a></font>
   <font face="Verdana" color="#57b947" size="3"><a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Human_Practices/panel"; style="color:#57b947"><u>Human Practices Panel >></u></a></font>
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Latest revision as of 01:29, 27 September 2012

Human Practices

Human Practices

Only by knowing the reality of our project could we know its potential for impact, so one key aim of our human practices exploration has been to investigate this possibility.


Our project is a gateway to developing technology that will revolutionise glycobiology and consequently have a huge impact on all levels of society. The potential impact of novel polysaccharides on medical, industrial and social sectors is vast and it is this we have been considering. We wanted to explore our ideas and whether they were commercially possible, testing if our idea had genuine, real world impact. We engaged with industry-leading businesses including the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), a leading local food manufacturer, ISCA Biochemicals Ltd. and Avon Cosmetics. Please see here to read more about our experiences with this. Discussing our project and the importance of synthetic biology has emphasised the relevance of this work: even at the level of an undergraduate competition project it is clearly thought to be of significance to industry.


A new generation of young people is needed to drive a responsible, boundary-seeking future in synthetic biology and we believe that we have passed on a legacy by inspiring several work experience students over the summer. You can read the thoughts of our work experience students here and here. We engaged with the public through Cafe Scientifique, talking about the impact of synthetic biology and by using our project as one of the examples, we were able to get direct feedback on this. Our write up for this is here. We ran an A-level master class about the power of synthetic biology and caught the imagination of more than 80 students who had the chance to explore potential projects and impacts. Please find out more about this here. We have engaged the interest of people from all walks of life, from school children to industry leading companies, such as those mentioned above. We believe that synthetic biology is more than just the science. Synthetic biology incorporates all elements of human practices.
<< Revisit the Future Human Practices Panel >>

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