Team:Lethbridge/HumanPractices

Integrated Human Practices

Being located in Southern Alberta led the Lethbridge iGEM team to look into technologies related to agriculture. With over 120 established agri-food processing businesses in the Lethbridge region producing food and feed for local consumption and export, this sector has seen significant investments, including the Cavendish potato processing plant, which constitutes Lethbridge's largest private investment, valued at approximately $350 million.

We were introduced to Dr. Yevtushenko, potato research chair of the University in Lethbridge, and learned about his research with potatoes. Dr. Yevtushenko and his colleagues are interested in the theory behind manipulating antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) like BMAP-18 as a possible means for combating African Trypanosomiasis, or Sleeping Sickness, a disease native to Sub-Saharan Africa. Our team drew inspiration from their approach. We modelled our project design using AMPs to increase potatoes' genetic resistance to the fungal pathogen Fusarium graminearum.

As a team, we learned that there were many areas for innovation where potatoes were concerned. The potato's general storage life can extend between one week to a few months, increasing opportunities for fungal pathogens to infect the crop. The pathogen Fusarium graminearum is a fungal infection that can lead to devastating outcomes. Our initial goal was to engineer a solution to combating dry rot within potatoes and engineering a potato resistant to fungal infections like Fusarium sp.

Learning about BMAP and some initial interviews led us to redirect our project's trajectory to address certain realities and problems involving BMAP. We came to understand that introducing foreign AMPs for consumption would qualify the potato as a genetically modified organism. GMOs' implications in agriculture came with its plethora of complications, including safety concerns and GMOs’ policies and regulations. We became aware by talking to experts that to bypass the possible toxic side effects of introducing new AMPs into potatoes, we could instead engineer AMPs already present in the organism. This approach would allow us to more safely and effectively modify the potato.

Interviews

The Human Practices team has conducted several interviews throughout this summer, with many individuals with great agriculture or industry expertise. The insight which we received from interviewing these individuals helped grow our project.

Interview with Dr. Neilson: Research Scientist- Potato Health at AAFC Lethbridge Research and Development Center

Dr. Neilson was the first interview we had and he introduced us to both sides of the controversy surrounding the implementation of GMO’s. He provided us with advice on how to approach the subject with our other interviewees and how to deal with some of the backlash a project like ours would receive. Our project initially began focused on addressing Sleeping Sickness in Africa due to our collaboration with the Yevtushenko lab at the University of Lethbridge. After talking to Dr. Neilson about this back lash and his opinions to make the project more acceptable in the eyes of the general public. His main concern was using “a hightech solution to a lowtech problem,” so that we should focus on something that doesn’t have mainstream pharmaceutical solutions. He presented some issues such as disease prevalence and his own work. We shifted our focus to be more local and began to investigate fusarium infection after some research to see which fungal infections were prevalent in our area that did not have adequate solutions or prevention measures.

Interview with David Hill: Director of Development, Cor Van Raay Southern Alberta Agribusiness Program

Our interview with David Hill was focused around finding ways we could present our project to the general public. We told us that when it comes to changing something, “You have to look at where people’s values lie and what’s important to them.” He spoke about a detachment in today’s society from the farming communities and farming since many individuals are no longer a part of the food production. Since many people no longer are actively involved in the food production of society, altering food solely to help the farming communities would not be considered acceptable. This caused us to expand our project towards including nutraceuticals. Since preventing disease would only reduce expenses for farmers, we wanted to find a way to engage the general population to understand the potential benefits of this type of science. He also mentioned that “Convenience is often the root of choosing frozen over fresh products.” This was the inspiration between increasing nutritional value for the potatoes, since potatoes are a fast and easy food to prepare, so increasing the nutritional value would allow for a quick nutritional snack/meal.

Interview with Lara De Moissac: Hops Agronomist and Field Manager

Lara De Moissac has great experience in horticulture and agriculture as well, which is why our team decided to reach out and asked for her opinion on our project. It was great speaking with Lara as she helped stir the idea to move towards a topical application of our AMPs. In her interview she talked about how some of the main apprehension towards using AMPs in the treatment of Fusarium would be altering the natural state of the tubers. Since a topical application could have the same impact, while not permanently altering the natural state of the tuber we shifted our focus towards a topical application. Lara helped us to understand the importance of outreach within the agricultural community. As we progressed with our survey, We had many questions about approaching farmers as many may be sensitive to the idea of GMO's. It was important to understand the sensitivity the agricultural community has with using GMOs as well as understanding what distinguishes the term genetically modified from genetically engineered.

Interview with Floraine Dieker: Agronomist at Perry Produce LTD.

Interviewing Mr. Dieker was monumental as it shifted our focus towards natural AMPs which would reduce infection rate due to membrane damage. He provided us with some of the currently accepted guidelines of what is a GMO according to larger potato supply companies. This allowed us to realize that altering the composition of AMPs already in potatoes would be perceived more as a rapid domestication process rather than a genetic modification. Using AMPs native to the potato would be beneficial as it is. Interviewing Mr. Dieker also made us aware of how to go about 'marketing' our product to benefit farmers and make it more accessible to them. He spoke on the various guidelines and regulations large companies such as Lays and McCains have. Mr. Dieker explained varying methods and environments that can influence the effects of Fusarium and other pathogens. Furthermore, it explained methods to address these issues. He also gave us a scope of the varying regulations for supplying healthy potatoes to large transnational companies.

Interview with Michele Konschuh: Irrigated Crop Scientist

Our interview with Michele Konschuh was good at bringing some of the more practical issues we would encounter when doing a project like this. One of these main points she presented was the importance of heat stability of the AMPs being used. She made us aware that we need to consider the heat stability of our AMPs so they don’t denature when consumed. This has allowed the modelling team to go through and check what is known about the heat stability of the AMPs we are dealing with. She also mentioned that “with food it's not about being healthy, it's about being better than the alternatives.” This reinforced our decision to pursue nutraceuticals since making potatoes healthier would achieve just that.

Interview with Gurbir Dhillon: Research Scientist with Farming Smarter

Our interview with Dr. Gurbir Dhillon was done to help finalize our project timeline and assess how realistic our project would be now that we had settled into an area of focus. Working with Farming Smarter to approve and give guidance on their projects we used his knowledge of project design to guide our own. He talked about two main things that contributed to our project design. He said that “some projects cannot be applied right away” and that you can “prove a concept but it isn’t economically feasible.” This advice changed our project from a direct application project to a conceptual project. We are now focusing on proving that the AMPs can be administered into potatoes, are heat stable, and have the desired effects of nutrition and resistance to Fusarium infection. The second contribution in our project design is finding a way to balance ethics and innovation. He encouraged pushing the current boundaries of agriculture, but that we need total transparency. This created the idea of making a survey to give to potato farmers in our area to see where they stand on the issues of GMOs.

Interview with Charles Nakishima: Potato Farmer/Supplier

Our interview with Charles Nakishima was to check in with an actual supplier, who has a good reputation supplying large companies (potato farmer). We interviewed him in order to understand if our project would make sense in the real world or in the real market. Thus, we could visualize what impact our project could potentially have. In this interview he mentioned some of the current tools used to combat fusarium and the potential effects of an infection. As a very rough estimate he said that fungicide treatments can cost around $300 per acre and these can be fungus specific, so this has to be done multiple times for all applicable infections that could occur. He also says that if an Fusarium pathogen is missed in treatment and creates an infection it leads to around 15-20% in crop losses. This interview reinforced out project decision to focus on fusarium.

Collaborations

Lethbridge High School team mentorship: Dia Koupantsis, Fabian Rohden, Abel Belay and Emily Hagens

Del Norte High School San Diego team mentorship: Dia Koupantsis, Fabian Rohden

High River Notre Dame Collegiate Highschool team mentorship: Emily Hagens

Lethbridge High School

For the ninth consecutive year, we collaborated with the Lethbridge High School iGEM team. Our student leader Dia Koupantsis, acted as advisors to the Lethbridge High School team and provided mentorship, and assistance in all areas of their project as well as presented on various bioethical topics. Emily Hagens helped with the designing and ordering of the constructs for the Highschool team and Abel Belay also acted as an advisor for the Lethbridge HS team and helped them with the wiki content. For the Lethbridge HS team and the San Diego HS team, our advisor Fabian Rohden gave an online workshop via zoom, on how to identify potential socio-economic impacts of an iGEM project if it would get applied into real life. After an introduction of socio-economic impacts, the current project of the Lethbridge HS was used as an example. The workshop helped the teams to identify affected stakeholders and how the real-life implications of their project can be addressed within the project design.

Del Norte High School San Diego team

Dia Koupantsis acted as a teacher/mentor for the DNHS iGEM team through the Mentor/Mentee iGEM program. Dia helped the DNHS team with experimental design, construct design, protocol, survey design, human practices, modeling. Additionally, Fabian Rohden gave an online workshop on both the DNHS team and the Lethbridge HS team, on how to identify potential socio-economic impacts of an iGEM project and how these can be applied in real life.

High River Notre Dame Collegiate Highschool team

Emily Hagens provided mentorship to her old high school iGEM team, She helped with construct ordering, helped with the formation and flow of the lab subgroups, as well as with explaining lab techniques and Basic concepts of synthetic biology.