Team:Sorbonne U Paris/Human Practices
Integrated human practices
We chose to carry out a project with an environmental and societal impact. Wishing to implement our system in the real world, we needed to understand the various challenges we were going to face. Thus, we realised interviews and discussions (available on our Youtube channel) with specialists in the domain, and their feedback helped us process our work and improve our project.
We carried out this integration work for different aspects: understanding the environmental impact of water pollution and how to raise public awareness about it, the creation of a start-up, how to raise money and communicate around our project, and how to execute it in real life. The professionals we met encouraged us to ask ourselves questions about issues that should drive every project: safety, sustainability, inclusivity, ethics and other transversal aspects. We carried out this methodology for the entire cycle of the iGEM competition, you will realize it by reading this page.
Sing-Pei Yu
Since our project is built around the presence of various pollutants into water, we are also concerned by the issue of microplastic pollution in water. We wanted to talk about different types of pollutants, and not only the ones our project targets. Everyone has already heard of microplastics once, and the obvious reason being that it is one of the most abundant pollutants in water. The study of microplastics has led to alarming conclusions, environmentally speaking as well as for human health. Indeed, many objects and materials are made of plastic and when the sorting system is not as effective as it should be, garbage is spread in the environment and often ends up in water. As the degradation process occurs over time, it produces smaller and smaller particles of plastics, invisible to the naked eye: microplastics.
Two members of our team interviewed Sing-Pei Yu, a researcher who works on microplastics effects on marine wildlife, with barnacles as an animal model. Indeed, barnacles are unselective filter feeders meaning they will eat whatever is present in the water including microplastic. What came out of this interview is that microplastics cause higher mortality on barnacles culture generation F1. More studies are needed to support this hypothesis but it shows a clear impact of microplastics on aquatic wildlife, thus it could have an impact on the deregulation of the trophic network.
Sing-Pei Yu is also involved in actions to develop the general public's awareness: she gives talks in elementary schools and highschools and she is in the process of writing a comic. The iGEM Sorbonne 2020 team has been delighted to discuss with her and we thank her very much for agreeing to answer our questions.
This interview helped us understand the wild range of water pollutants, the environmental impact of water pollution and the importance of raising public awareness about it. We applied her advice on how to address the public. She also inspired us to make a comic book as well. You can discover our different actions in the Science and Communication part of our wiki.
Animafac's workshops
At the beginning of our project, some of our members took part in a workshop organized by the Animafac network, which has supported student initiatives, promoted commitment and connected young people for more than 20 years. The workshop in question focused mainly on the search for funding. Questions related to the communication around our project were also addressed. As such, we learned to differentiate the different types of funding available in France for student projects. Indeed, there is public funding such as the FSDIE and the Paris City Council that we have applied for and private funding whether it is sponsorship or patronage. Finally, the speakers presented us the different crowdfunding sites with their advantages and disadvantages. This workshop not only gave us an overview of the funding we could expect but also allowed us to choose the right crowdfunding platform according to our needs. We have therefore adapted our research and funding actions following this workshop. As a matter of fact, the idea of organizing a refreshment bar to sell cakes, pancakes and hot drinks and of course, to make us known on our campus, arose after this workshop.
As for the communication part of the workshop, the speakers gave us advice on how to present our project to various partners in a way that is always professional and attractive. They advised us to create a document in order to list all the partnership contacts we were able to make, as well as for funding requests so that we could solicit these people from year to year or just not contact them anymore when the partnership or funding request was unsuccessful. Finally, for the communication of our project to the public, the Animafac network advised us to appoint a person who would be at the head of the communication in order to have harmony. Of course, within the framework of the iGEM competition, we have appointed heads of divisions. Our Human Practices unit manager was therefore in charge of the communication calendar. Given the considerable amount of work we did throughout the year, all the members of the division were involved in communication, particularly on social media and of course with the help of the rest of the team. This enabled us to maintain consistency throughout the year, both in terms of visuals and the language used.
Animafac's forum
In march 2020 we participated in the “Focus Strasbourg” along with over fifty other associations. We conducted a debate workshop around genetic engineering and its potential ecological applications. Interestingly, most of the participants shared the opinion that the public image of genetic manipulation was only focusing on very few examples placed behind the acronym “GMO”. They were very interested in learning more about the topic and questioned their prejudices about it. Many aspects of genetic engineering were discussed. Ethical questions were raised and divided the participants. People had very different opinions regarding how far men can go when it comes to modifying the living. This led to a fascinating and dynamic debate.
This event allowed us to realize that the choice of words that we use when we communicate about our project is very important. Indeed, many people have unfavorable opinions regarding GMOs. The way to express oneself is therefore essential.
Py Collén and Pierre Rocheteau
We interviewed Py Collén and discussed with Pierre Rocheteau who both work at Olmix group. Olmix is a company specialized in algae use (mainly opportunistic ones). They set up a biorefinery that enables them to produce several semi-finished products, that they then use to develop finished products for animal and plant food and health. By using their products, they participate in the reduction of antibiotics use in animals thus decreasing their release in fields and crops and then water through feces.
It was very interesting to discover a different way algae can be used.
With them we discussed the use of algae in research and the implementation of our project. They raised precise questions we had not thought of which was very enriching. For example, where have we planned to put our filter exactly, in the river directly or in water treatment plants? Would it be static or not? How are we going to feed the algae? How much of them would we need and how do we plan on getting rid of the dead ones? They highlighted essential points that must be taken into account to bring a laboratory project to a larger scale and they gave us precious advice to do so. We also spoke about our kill-switch system to prevent the escape of our modified algae in the environment and we discussed considering a more diverse system with different microbial types. This would ensure a complete degradation of the targeted pollutants and could make our system more reliable because monocultures are more sensible than an entire ecosystem. This is actually a great idea for the implementation of the project. However, in the frame of the competition we wanted to use
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
only to show that this microalgae is a relevant solution for depolluting water.
The team thanks Py Collén and Pierre Rocheteau for the extremely interesting conversations and advice they gave us that led to the consideration and adaptation of some parts of the project especially concerning the implementation. This was completed with the talk with Julien Chabrol from Veolia that that is discussed in the next paragraph.
Julien Chabrol
In order to think about how we would implement our project in the real world, we approached Julien Charbol, expert in instrumentation at Veolia with an expertise in water treatment in purification stations. Wishing to implement our system within wastewater treatment plants, we needed to understand the various challenges we were going to face.
He explained to us certain characteristics that our system had to be equipped with for implementation in wastewater treatment plants. He helped us to visualize our filter, what type of additional equipments can be added, how to fix our algae on the support and think of the position our system. In addition, our system will create by-products that must be taken into account. To summarize, depending on the parameters that our algae will be able to withstand and the filter we want to design, we will not be implementing our product in the same place in the water treatment chain. He also made us aware of the supply chain for our algae. He told us that it might be necessary to provide for continuous cultivation if there is a need for reseeding. We think of creating biopharms combined with precise protocols for the transport of algae from the production site to the site of use.
He also told us that working on GMOs, we must consider the safety aspects. Also, in order not to further impact the environment if algae escaped from the filter, we integrated a "kill-switch" device based on UV-sensitive nuclease genetic circuit leading to the death of the microalgae.
Julien Chabrol helped us think about another possible implementation which would be to use our system to treat industrial effluents. Indeed, the government increasingly encourages industries to equip themselves with devices of this type. Manufacturers would therefore represent a second user to whom we would offer our implementation.
If you want to know more about the implementation of our project and how Julien Chabrol helped us to make it happen, we invite you to go to the Implementation page of our wiki.