Team:Chalmers-Gothenburg/Collaborations
Collaborations
In 2019, team iGEM Lund started up The SynthEthics initiative as a platform to discuss ethical concerns regarding ingestible GMOs. Last year’s team from Chalmers-Gothenburg participated by discussing given ethical questions from the perspective of their project. This year, our team was invited by the SynthEthics ambassador Rahil Samlal. Throughout the project, we upheld continuous communication with Rahil, discussing various considerations from an ethical perspective. As a wrap up, we presented the outcome of the collaboration in the graduate level course Ethics in biotechnology (Read more in the section Educational outreach).
Below, we present the most relevant points brought to attention during this collaboration. We would like to thank Rahil and other SynthEthics ambassadors for an amazing job and for the valuable exchange of thoughts we’ve had throughout the year.
“The fibres that your genetically modified E. coli would degrade could possibly release unintentional toxic chemicals. What are these chemicals? How can you control their possible spread?“
The only dangerous chemical that our process would potentially release would be 4,4-diphenyl-diisocyanate. Our aim, however, is that the native deaminases of the E. coli strain that we are using will further degrade this molecule into diphenylmethane. With the genes that we are introducing this would eventually turn into benzoate. If this turns out to not function, this step will require improvements. We will work closely with modelling and adaptive laboratory evolution until this step works as intended. If the degradation proves hard to continue past this step, we will instead look towards safely collecting and purifying the 4,4-diphenyl-diisocyanate since it is a valuable chemical that could be reused and incorporated into the business model. On the other hand, if the process is successful, we wish to instead separate the benzoate for the same purpose. In future experiments the possibility to engineer the e-coli to also degrade the benzoate will also be included.
“The released modified E. coli could escape into areas not confined within the scope of its release, thus possibly disrupting existing ecosystems.”
I have, as you point out, previously stated that our aim is not to release something, but to collect and degrade in a safe facility. The risk of accidentally releasing E. coli, even though minimal, cannot however be completely ignored since the impacts it could have on the environment could be tremendous. In the lab we always wear lab coats and gloves to protect from bringing something outside the lab on your hands and clothes mistakenly. We are also very thorough with autoclavation of materials and solutions that we have used.
“Increase the inequality gap, or classism, where you project outcomes might only be available to the rich, and inaccessible to the poor. This one is very important to focus on when you build your business idea. I see that you plan to mitigate this by making your project cost effective. One of the things I want you to focus on with regards to your ethics is the effect of your modified bacteria’s effect on biodiversity. Have you considered other experiments which show the effect of the exogenous gene products on other organisms which are present in your specified locations?”
As you said, we wish to make this sustainable and cheap for it to be able to help the people in third world countries. Since we will not have other organisms in our location, and will not work towards releasing the bacteria, it will be very hard to answer this question. It does not seem useful or productive to speculate what it will do to the environment if released since it is so hard to pinpoint exactly where they would end up. If the possible ramifications of our bacteria would have to be analysed for every available environment there would hardly be time for managing the project. We have instead opted for designing an optogenetic kill switch in order to prevent all types of unintended release. What could be said about unintended release though is that all of the genes that we have chosen naturally exist in microorganisms today, more on this later. Our hypothesis is therefore that the potential for serious damage to the environment, in case of bacterial release, would probably be limited. Since the strains of e-coli we are working with are non-pathogenic, the estimated danger it would pose to humans is also low.
“Another question to consider is how to explain to consumers that your products will not cause harm to organisms or life in their nearby surroundings. What are the criteria for locations that you plan release this modified organism?”
We will not release the organism but rather keep it safely in a laboratory surrounding. Possible upscaling would implement larger bioreactors but not a change in environment.
“What must it have and not have (basically what is the inclusion and exclusion items)?”
As of right now the bacteria still would require some form of media to function and grow. It would as of today's planning grow in the vicinity of the blended cotton/Elastane fabrics and enzymatically degrade the elastane part. When we later filter out the bacteria it would hopefully leave a mix of only natural fibres that can be reused, not unsimilar from viscose and lyocell. Another proposition would be to let the bacteria grow separate from the textiles and then later purify the enzymes and use the ensuing enzymatic soup. This would hopefully produce the same results without letting the bacteria near the actual fabric.
“Lastly, you state ‘The thought is not to release something into the environment, but rather to collect and safely degrade what is already there.’ I like this principle and explanation. What will happen to the modified E. coli once it has made the products which degrade the elastane, PET, and/or PEG?”
There are two different scenarios that we envision. Either we use the E. coli in media to produce an “enzymatic cocktail” that, upon addition to textiles containing elastane, will start the degradation. This would mean that the bacteria would never get close to the actual textile fibres, but rather can safely be kept separate. The other available scenario would have both the modified E. coli and the textiles together in the same bioreactor. The E. coli would then have to be filtered out and separated from the natural fibres. Preferably this could be a continuous process where the E. coli remain in the bioreactor to degrade more elastane. Otherwise it will most certainly be autoclaved upon filtration to prevent it being released with the separated natural fibres.
The Transcriptome
The Swiss-Swedish beginning
From our team, we felt like one of the drawbacks of how Covid-19 affected the iGEM competition was the lack of interaction between teams. From the beginning, we tried to brainstorm ways to collaborate with other people as much as possible. Then, one of the members of our team, Leti, learnt that her friend, Pablo, was part of the iGEM UNIL team (check our their work here: iGEM UNILausanne) in Switzerland. This led to the idea of the Swiss-Swedish collaboration.
We wanted to work together on something that would not be dependent on our projects, as they were not fully defined at that time.
Quickly we came to the idea of building a blog, since members from both teams were passionate about sharing their knowledge about science and synthetic biology. During one of our discussions we brought up the issue of the language barrier in science. Most scientific papers are written in English, and so is most of the material to divulgate science: Youtube channels, TED-talks or blogs about science are mainly in English, so they may not fully reach people not fluent in this language.
Our common goal was set, now we needed to make it happen! Check out more about our journey in Science Communication!
