Team:Valencia Biocampus/Ethics

Our project consists of talking with microorganisms. But… what would happen if they lied to us? Not consciously, of course, but mutants who give different answers to the same question could be evolutionarily favoured in a bacterial culture. Our Human Practices team analyzed this and other situations.

What if this talking technology was used in everyday devices and they lied? How would people react to this? Should the blame be given to companies developing those devices? How frequently would mutants appear? Imagine that this technology was hackeable. What ethical issues would arise?

Our Human Practices section plays a central and integrated role in our iGEM project. Not only did we explore ethical concerns of our activity, but also we coordinated our work in the lab to see how real our predictions were. We addressed the questions above in three ways:

• We decided to shoot a short film about those situations (link) and show it to different audiences. We then analyzed their comments and response to the short film.
• Together with the modeling team, we tried to predict how often those liars or cheaters would appear in cultures, studying the “cheaters’” dynamics.
• In the lab, we studied cheaters against the original culture, comparing their fitness.

Follow us through our journey by hovering over our kind microorganisms:

Click here to watch the 10 min film written, acted and debated by us. Based on real ethical concerns but in the form of a fictional story. We envisaged a possible future application for our talking bacterial cultures and we used the movie as a vehicle for reflection and to trigger debate. The movie initiates debate around three ethical issues: Could we use talking bacteria to care for others? Who should own living technologies? If bacteria can speak, can they also mislead us?

Talking Life

If you are fond of our work on Human Practices, download our Ethical issues diary here!