After we released our survey to gain an understanding about how our project would be accepted in society for silver human practices, we analysed the responses so we could develop our project using the feedback. We asked questions about how severe people believe species endangerment is, what they believe the biggest cause of species endangerment is, which organisms they think are most at risk of extinction and how they learn about threats to wildlife. As well as this we had a series of questions on the ethics of synthetic biology, how much knowledge people had about synthetic biology and whether or not they would want to learn more about our project. An amazing 75% percent of 10-19 year olds who completed the survey said that they would want to learn more about bioengineering and iGEM. This really pushed us to focus on education when developing our project, which can be seen in our science communication work, as we found it extremely important to provide factual information to people and inspire interest in synthetic biology.
As well as this, the opinions about the ethics of synthetic biology were extremely important to us as after looking at the results we felt there was room to improve the social understanding of synthetic biology and our project. As we explained in our silver human practices, a lot of those who responded to our survey left the ethics question blank, so we believed that encouraging greater discussion to fully understand the ethics of synthetic biology and help people decide whether they believe it is dangerous or not was the best way to resolve any uncertainties. As part of the leaflets we created for adults and students for science communication, we created a google drive alongside this to supplement understanding of iGEM by including useful links and power points that could be accessed at any time. We also spent time creating an ethics folder on this google drive to ensure that people can learn about synthetic biology from accurate resources.
Workshop session
When we first began brainstorming ways to develop our project using the survey analysis, the google drive seemed to be the best way to spread information and make it accessible to all as it was all online and at that time there were strict Coronavirus regulations and both of our schools were still closed. However, following our success with the leaflet we had sent out as the students and the large amount of interest that we had gained, we knew we needed to do something more comprehensive to further understanding of species endangerment. However, when school reopened again we decided to have a session with our lower school students as if we did not break social distancing between our year groups, we could go to them in real life and hold an interactive session. We focussed on explaining iGEM and our project aims whilst keeping complex scientific ideas to a minimum so the information could be easily digested by the younger children.
Communication
Thames water communication
After developing the biological circuits for our project, we needed to understand more about the London Sewer System and contacted Thames Water, through email, as we were unable to organise an in person meeting. Thames Water provided us with useful information on the dimensions of their machinery and the studies that they had produced on water pollution in the sewers. To be able to make a well thought through decision on where it would be most effective to put our system, we also asked Thames Water for details on the sewage flow rates and the specific process which occur at each step in the sewage system. Paul Hampton, the education manager at Thames Water, suggested some very useful documents which we could use. We found that the flow rates were lowest at the lamella clarifiers in the settling tanks and decided that this would be the best place to put our circuits as a low flow rate meant a higher contact time, allowing our project to breakdown the maximum amount of cocaine possible. We planned to replicate the lamella clarifier structure, using polyvinyl, and immobilise GFP upon this surface. To successfully be able to attach our circuits to these polyvinyl structures, we decided to modify our bacteria to produce a surface membrane protein which could adhere to GFP. This was a big step in the integration of our project feedback as it was the first major adjustment we had made towards the safety of our project.
Sammy Lovat communication
We decided to reach out to an alumni student from City of London School, who is studying biochemistry at University and had a lot of experience with iGEM as he was heavily involved with City of London School’s 2017 project. He provided us with a lot of useful feedback and pushed us to consider the idea of containment in our project. We went on to learn about the dangers of putting modified E. coli into the sewage system more extensively and learnt that should the bacteria escape into the water, there could be a potential threat of spreading antibiotic resistance into other bacteria and thus into the wider ecosystem. This was very important to us as following our original human practices research, we had a strong feeling as a team that environmentally, our project should have no potential negative implications as it aims to bring about a positive change in our environment, if it could have negative effects, the project would become contradictory to what our beliefs were as a team. To combat the potential that bacteria may escape into the River Thames, our team decided to use a MazF-MazE toxin-antitoxin kill switch which would kill our antibiotic-resistant bacteria when hypoxic conditions were met, adding an extra safety aspect to our project which we had not originally planned to do but developed following feedback.
Sustainable Eel Group Communication
Our contact with the sustainable eel group helped us learn about the major threats to the European Eels and it was clear through various phone calls that chemical pollution was not the main issue that the European Eel were facing. Man-made additions into the River Thames were by far the greatest issue as they disrupt the flow of the river and therefore the ability for aquatic organisms to swim up and down easily and safely. Our team realised that if we really wanted to see a change, we would need to go beyond our iGEM project and campaign by contacting those involved in legislation which aims to keep European Eels safe. We understood that the EU has created a standard in order to prevent the European Eel’s extinction which every country needs to follow, however, several countries do not fully implement these laws as there is a lack of enforcement. When first considering the implications of our project and where the responsibility to protect endangered species lies, we decided that those in power need to be urged to acknowledge that this is a pressing issue as they are in the position to make large scale changes. Therefore, we thought that writing a letter would be the best way to develop our project following our extensive communication with the Sustainable Eel Group as we could ensure that developments are made within political legislation and therefore greater conversation of this great issue is encouraged within society.
London Zoo Communication
We spoke to Phoebe Shaw Stewart from the Marine and Freshwater Conservation group at London Zoo in order to gain further insight into the issues surrounding the European Eel and the current conservation methods. She explained that although there are physical boundaries such as barriers in the River Thames, at London Zoo they are working on assessing the upstream migration of eels and elvers thereby overcoming the issues within the River Thames and working towards improving the habitat closer to the European Eel’s breeding ground. This was very interesting as we planned to develop our social outreach based around the fact that there needs to be physical change within the European Eel’s habitat and if London can afford to implement fewer barriers in the River Thames, they should. However, after learning about the London Zoo Conservation method we understood that our project remained vital, as if cocaine is prevalent in the River Thames even when working to conserve eels there is the issue of chemical pollution. We also made sure to stress the importance of habitat restoration in our letter to the European Union.
Imperial College London Communication
Later on in our project development, we acknowledged that we needed support with modelling and reached out to Imperial College London’s iGEM team. We gained feedback from them on how we were going about our modelling and they helped us understand and use Michaelis-Menten kinetics. As well as this, they offered their team’s introduction to synthetic biology modelling which we used to develop our modelling process as it helped us move from the theoretical ideas to practical construction.
