Project

• Overview
  • Data Page
  • Accomplishments
  • Post-Jamboree
• Human Practices
  • Initiative
  • Interviews
  • Design
  • Killswitch
  • Regulation
  • Kill Genes
  • Safety
• FRED
  • Toxin Sensing
  • Electroreporting
  • Modelling
  • Device Prototype
• OSCAR
  • Decarboxylation
  • Decatecholization
  • Flux Analysis
  • Bioreactor
  • Upgrading
  • Desulfurization
  • Denitrogenation
• Synergy
• References
• Attributions

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Introduction To What We Saw As Human Practices. Always make it pertain to our project! The Calgary 2012 iGEM team saw safety, ethics, and human practices as one of the most important elements in clearly developing our project. Before developing our synthetic biology systems we wanted to ensure that each component of our project was built with other groups and individuals in mind. Through various interviews with specialists, outreach activities, the development of physical and genetic safety elements, and the production of a video game on synthetic biology, our group complimented our wetlab work with relevance to our community and end users.

Interviews With Experts

In order to determine the relavence of producing a device capable of detecting and breaking down naphthenic acid's (NAs) as well as other compounds in the tailings ponds our group conducted a series of individuals within Alberta's oil and gas sector with various different backgrounds. The hope with this was to do get a general overview of what was most important to include in our project and what kind of safety or ethical concerns these individuals had. This work allowed us to better define our project for its intended use. To read more about this please click here.

Design Considerations

From the interivews that we conducted, our group was able to conclude that in order for our remediation system to have a potential use in the oil and gas sector, it was important that we encorporate safety and controls into every part of our design. We divided these systems into two major components: Physical or Engineered Considerations, and Genetic Considerations.

Physical/Engineered Considerations

In order to develop bioreactor or biosensors, the phsyical device must contain components to ensure that the genetically modified organism (GMO) that we produce is self-contained and has limited availability to the outside environment. This was important to ensure that there could not be any accidental contamination of our organims into the environment and reduce risk of our synthetic elements becoming available to other organisms. Additionally, in the case of both technologies, the largest risk was the accidental contamination of the tailing ponds with our modified organisms. While the gravity of the consequence of this is relatively unknown, we recognized it was possible that our synthetic organism may outcompete natural organisms in the environment. Therefore we designed a series of systems including a bleach solution for our biosensor, and a closed bioreactor system with UV treatment prior to exit, to ensure our organism remains contained. To read more about this please click here.