Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/HP QnA

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SURVEYS - Q&A

Light of No Return

Questions from the respondents:

“Do we have the right to engineer living organisms?”

Based on the present law, we have. But if you are asking this related to God or other so-called life creators, it becomes an ethical question, and there is so far no any absolute correct answer.

“I don’t know if light frequency can also control the movement of bacteria”
In some sense, we can, as the sensor proteins can only response to certain light frequency.

 “Do you mean creating these bacteria but not finding them? Then good luck. That reminds me of aerobic bacteria set on algae under the water, and they move according to light.”
Typically in synthetic biology, we introduce systems from other organisms into a model organism, in which case typically the E. coli. We are well-aware that the existence of various phototactic organisms, and this is the why we “copy” their systems to E. coli, as we need the system readily use in normal conditions that can be easily maintained in laboratory and other industrial applications.

 “Would it be workable to control the bacteria movement in human body to cure disease?”

In principal, we can achieve this as long as the bacteria are tested for toxicity in human body and the effectiveness of this application.

New Safety Approach

Questions from the respondants:

“I don't know why certain kind of cells causes pollution once they are released to the environment, like the algae?”

The term “pollution” means the unwanted/contaminated materials being introduced to an environment. The cells are considered as unwanted material when they cause toxicity or selective advantage on survival to disrupt the ecosystem of the environment. They are considered as pollution even they are killed as their genetic materials, cytosolic contents are still present in the environment.

“Even the leakage can be prevented, but will the bio-engineered cell cause a boost in the quantity of other organisms and lead to the unbalance of the ecosystem in the long term?”

We need to test the cell-cell communication between bio-engineered cell and other organisms. Usually they communicate via signaling molecules. If we understand the mechanism, then we could prevent the boost in quantity of other organisms caused by the presence of bio-engineered cell.

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