Our Integrated Human Practices Journey
Conservation Perspectives
In order to protect the coral reefs, we needed to learn more about conservation, particularly where synthetic biology could play a role.
Revive & Restore are conservation experts, specialising in the application and incorporation of biotechnology to conservation practices. Our partnership with them inspired us to consider the potential of synthetic biology as a good and responsible approach to conservation.
Applying their advice, we reached out to Australian ethicists and social scientists to examine social attitudes towards synthetic biology.
Approaching Social Attitudes To Science
The dynamic between public attitudes and synthetic biology within the evolving climate change conditions are complex. Therefore, we contacted ethicists and social scientists to help us understand the social climate in which we were developing our synthetic biology solution.
Professor Matthew Kearnes
Professor Kearnes, a social scientist and ethicist, helped us frame our project against the core issue: climate change. “The nature of the problem is climate change - is your synthetic biology solution a mitigation or adaptation effort?”. With climate change unlikely to be resolved in the near future, the coral reefs will continue to bleach due to increasing ocean temperatures. Thus, we refined our project focus: using synthetic biology to adapt corals to greater ocean temperatures, so that they may survive climate change.
Professor Kearnes also spoke at length about how public acceptance of new technologies is always conditional, as there is still much public fear attached. This set up the way in which we asked nuanced questions about stakeholders’ “requirements” and “values” in a good solution.
In taking Professor Kearnes’ kind advice, we sought further contact with people who had experience in preventing coral bleaching, and the social landscape attached to it. This led us to Associate Professor David Suggett.
Associate Professor David Suggett
Associate Professor David Suggett is a marine biologist, a core member of The Climate Change Cluster, and leads initiatives such as the Coral Nurture Program. He encouraged us to engage with stakeholder values and needs in order to develop a good solution, emphasising the importance of “social licensing”.
As a result, we resolved to reach out, as early as possible, to a diverse range of stakeholders who are most impacted by coral bleaching. He encouraged us to allow stakeholder needs and values to define what makes a “good” and responsible solution. Therefore, we implemented his advice by adding the Part 2 “Defining A Good Solution” phase in our IHP framework.
Dr. Aditi Mankad
Dr. Aditi Mankad is a senior research scientist at CSIRO, Australia's national scientific research agency. Her experience gave us insight into Australia’s shifting social attitudes towards greater acceptance of synthetic biology as a conservation method on the Great Barrier Reef. Dr. Mankad shared supporting data from CSIRO’s most recent National Survey on public perceptions towards synthetic biology, which you can find on our “Integrated Human Practices” page.
Dr. Mankad discussed the great potential of synthetic biology as a scalable and “novel technology in our toolbox”. In addition, she suggested that a good and responsible approach may involve synthetic biology being used alongside traditional conservation methods, such as coral nurseries, to form a holistic approach to protecting our reefs. This reaffirmed to us our discussions with Revive & Restore on the significance of synthetic biology in current and future conservation efforts.
Finally, she stressed the importance of researching the ‘whole social ecosystem’, aligning with Professor Kearnes and Associate Professor Suggett’s advice on consulting diverse stakeholders.
What We Learnt
Our conversations with conservation experts, ethicists and social scientists gave our team great insight into the Australian society’s attitudes towards synthetic biology. Here, we realised two main important things that would direct our next steps:
- That synthetic biology is not only an exciting and feasible approach to solving coral bleaching, but it is necessary given climate change progression.
- That the next step in our development was to research and reach out to a diverse range of stakeholders, and ask them nuanced questions in a respectful manner.
Engaging With Those Affected
Following the advice of Professor Kearnes, Associate Professor Suggett and Dr. Mankad, our team researched a diverse range of stakeholders who were most affected by coral bleaching. We identified 5 major stakeholders: Traditional Owners, Biodiversity, Bioprospecting Coastal Protection, and Tourism & Fishing.
Through our newfound understanding of the social landscape, we were able to respectfully engage and ask nuanced questions about our stakeholders’ concerns and values, as well as their needs in a ‘good’ solution. For each of our stakeholders we sought to answer two key questions, using the approach that Professor Kearnes and Associate Professor Suggett advised:
- Why is coral bleaching a real problem to you?
- How do your values inform what you “require” in a good solution?
This formed the basis of our synthetic biology solution and heavily influenced PROTECC Coral’s human-centred design throughout the year.
Traditional Owners - Elle Davidson
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the Traditional Owners of the land, with over 70 distinct groups connected to the Great Barrier Reef and surrounding lands. Their continuing connection to the land and water spans a rich history since time immemorial.
Elle Davidson is a Balanggarra woman from the East Kimberley region, and lecturer of Indigenous Planning at the University of Sydney. In our conversations, she spoke about Traditional Owners’ deep emotional and spiritual connection to the land, as custodians with a cultural responsibility to care for the environment, including the coral reefs.
The Value-Informed “Needs” That A “Good” Solution Must Meet
- The need for humans to take responsibility and propose solutions to conservation problems
- The need for safety of the coral reefs and surrounding biodiversity
- The need to incorporate the Traditional Owner voice in conservation efforts
Biodiversity - Lawrence Menz
Biodiversity refers to the variety of life that can be found in a particular place. The Great Barrier Reef - the world’s largest coral reef system - is recognised as a world-heritage site for its diversity of coral species and biodiversity of greater marine life.
Lawrence Menz is a marine biologist whose experience lies in protecting coral reefs. Menz spoke about how biodiversity concerns are at the forefront of any coral restoration project. He explained that coral bleaching results in the loss of biodiversity. In turn, the reef would lose its resilience against worsening coral bleaching events. Further, the impacts that coral bleaching presents on biodiversity also have far-reaching implications on tourism, fishing and bioprospecting industries that rely on a healthy coral reef.
The Value-Informed “Needs” That A “Good” Solution Must Meet
- The need for safety of the coral reefs and surrounding biodiversity
Bioprospecting - Associate Professor Suhelen Egan
Bioprospecting, the search for novel compounds from natural sources, is invaluable to the progress of medicines. Coral reefs support a vast biodiversity, within which many organisms of bioprospecting interest exist.
Associate Professor Suhelen Egan specialises in use of novel bioactive compounds that are bioprospected from marine host-associated bacteria, as well as the microbial interactions within the coral reefs that maintain these organisms. Coral bleaching means the loss of the coral reefs and the biodiversity they sustain. Should this persist, the opportunity to discover novel compounds to treat presently incurable diseases, as well as their potential economic value, could be lost forever.
The Value-Informed “Needs” That A “Good” Solution Must Meet
- The need to maintain the continued survival of the coral reefs
- The need for the safety of the coral reef’s biodiversity
Coastal Protection - Local Council on the Queensland Coast
Coral reefs are an essential protector of the coast. They dissipate wave energy, thereby reducing the impact of coastal erosion and storm tide inundation. With the bleaching of coral reefs, coastal communities are losing their protection from coastal hazards.
Local Councils along the Queensland Coast have partnered with the Queensland State government on the “QCoast2100” project. This is an initiative to combat coastal hazards with adaptation strategies. Our team was informed that the gradual loss of the reef was leading to worsening coastal hazards which threatened communities’ homes and livelihoods. Homes in high-risk areas may need to be abandoned, and damage to the coastal landscape may reduce tourism which local businesses depend on. Without the protection of the coral reefs, coastal communities may face property, financial and employment losses, as well as displacement from their homes.
The Value-Informed “Needs” That A “Good” Solution Must Meet
- The need to ensure the survival of the coral reefs
- The need to maintain coastal biodiversity
- The need for a solution which maintains the appearance of the natural landscape
- The need for a ‘financially viable’ solution that the council can implement
Tourism & Commercial and Recreational Fishing - Great Barrier Reef Marine Parks Authority (GBRMPA)
As key employing industries on the Great Barrier Reef, tourism and fishing are major contributors to Australia’s economy. Marine tourism contributes $5.4 billion a year to the Australian economy, whilst supporting more than 69,000 jobs. Commercial fishing generates approximately $143 million annually for the Australian seafood industry. Recreational fishing represents a distinctive Australian way of life.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (‘GBRMPA’) stewards the reef by using the ‘best available science’ to protect the environment and dependent communities. It also liaises with tourism and fishing industries to ensure their voices are heard.
Unprevented coral bleaching harms the biodiversity of the oceans, thus decreasing fishing yield and diminishing the visual value of the reef. As a result, fishing and tourism industries would face economic devastation.
The Value-Informed “Needs” That A “Good” Solution Must Meet
- The need to maintain the continued survival of the coral reefs
- The need for the ensure the safety of the coral reef’s biodiversity, and of those who consume its produce
- The need for a solution that maintains the appearance of the natural landscape
- The need for a scalable solution
Prioritising Values
From our stakeholder consultations, we returned with many values and needs to consider.
Designing a solution which incorporated stakeholder voices by addressing each of these is what we considered a “good” and responsible solution to coral bleaching. However, time and resources were limited, leading us to quickly prioritise which values and needs to focus on in Phase I of our project. To read the full evaluation leading to our prioritisations, please see our Integrated Human Practices.
Our highest priority was to address the fundamental issue: coral bleaching due to rising ocean temperatures. Therefore, the main focus of our lab teams was to develop a solution which would increase the thermo-tolerance of corals.
Our conversations with social scientists and stakeholders solidified the importance of sustained meaningful dialogue with stakeholders. In order to develop a respectful and responsible solution, the Human Practices team prioritised engaging with those most impacted by coral bleaching.
The safety of our solution for biodiversity and human health was of great importance to our stakeholders. Reflecting this, our team designed a novel biocontainment system for Symbiodinium. Due to limitations on time, we have not yet tested this system, but aim to do so in Phase II. Additionally, we recognised that some public concerns regarding safety may stem from a lack of understanding about synthetic biology. To address this, our Science Communication team produced and presented educational packages. We endeavour to continue this education campaign throughout Phase II.
The next priority was ensuring that our solution maintained the appearance of the natural landscape, as the local economy depends heavily on environmental tourism. It was important to us that communities not lose the means to sustain themselves. Thus PROTECC Coral’s solution, which aimed to develop a thermo-tolerant coral, preserved this.
Our final identified value was that the solution be financially viable and scalable, allowing realistic implementation of the solution. Synthetic biology lends itself well to being scalable, and has great potential to be a financially viable solution. However, we did not yet have a developed solution to optimise, hence we decided to focus on this aspect in Phase II of PROTECC Coral.
Synthetic Biology As A Solution
The final aspect of defining a good solution was identifying whether synthetic biology was the appropriate field of research.
Through our conversation with social scientists and ethicists, we understood that attitudes ranged from full support, to believing that synthetic biology should be a technology of last resort. Currently, the coral reef situation is dire, with 50% of the GBR lost. Climate change progression is unlikely to cease in the immediate future, and it is our responsibility as humans to protect the environment from human-created harm. The responsible approach to this is to begin developing diverse adaptation strategies for coral reefs today.
Synthetic biology is a novel and powerful tool in our scientific toolbox. It holds great potential in its possibility to create a thermo-tolerant coral which may survive climate change. This is all whilst meeting a majority of stakeholder needs and values: it can be scalable, financially viable and preserve the natural appearance of the coast. While there are risks associated with synthetic biology for conservation solutions, our discussion with Revive and Restore introduced us to kill switches, which could serve as a biocontainment mechanism. This integrated a greater level of safety to synthetic biology solutions.
Overall, a synthetic biology adaptive solution to coral bleaching had incredible potential to do good. With the possibility of preserving the coral reefs whilst meeting stakeholder needs, it was a value-driven and people-centered solution. Given the heartbreaking state of the Great Barrier Reef, synthetic biology as a solution was a possibility we had to explore.
Given this resolution, our next step in the journey was to begin ideating and designing our synthetic biology solution.
The first two steps of our IHP framework gave us the benefit of understanding the problem. It helped us explore how our approach to synthetic biology offered a good and responsible solution. Finally it assisted in identifying stakeholder values that were required in our solution. With each of these components in mind, we moved to the third phase of our IHP framework: ideating and designing our solution.
In this step, our team reached out to various coral experts and academics whose experiences lay in research, implementation and modelling. These conversations helped drive the ideation and design of a technically sound, safe, and effective synthetic biology solution. This stage saw great technical development in our project as it changed and adapted to the advice and insight that was received.
Integrating Advice: Wet Lab Experts
As our project is split into two phases, our work this year was focused on designing a strong foundation for Phase II. The wet lab team consulted many experts in the fields that have shaped our project’s direction and workflow. The initial stages of our project focused on coral probiotics to alleviate coral bleaching, however Jesse Bergman and Melissa Katon directed our project to focus on transforming select proteins and enzymes into algal symbionts, to promote heat tolerance of coral and mitigate coral bleaching. This was suggested as the coral microbiome and its interactions are poorly understood and would be difficult to work with. We eventually settled on working with Symbiodinium as our chosen algal symbiont. Professor David Suggett suggested we chose a strain in Clade C or D as they are common in the Great Barrier Reef. We then chose to focus on Symbiodinium goraui from Clade C1 over Symbiodinium microadriaticum from Clade A. Professor Madeleine Van Oppen expressed her concerns of normal transformation techniques for Symbiodinium as they are notoriously difficult to work with. Instead we investigated combination transformation techniques and found Symbiodinium protoplast formation along with techniques such as electroporation could increase our chances in transforming Symbiodinium in the future. Joshua McClusky also suggested using Synechocystis spp. PCC 6803 as it is a well characterised, photosynthetic model organism that is easily transformable.
As we developed our solutions, Professor Wallace Bridge suggested using the bifunctional glutathione synthetase for glutathione production which is not affected by product inhibition as opposed to the glutamate-cysteine ligase and GSH synthetase enzymes. Dr. Owain Edwards also built on this idea and suggested adding glutathione reductase to our antioxidant system to increase the efficiency of the antioxidant system. Dr. Dominic Glover suggested we use a chaperone activity assay he had previously performed to assess chaperone activity for our protein. We tried to modify our steps workflow to accommodate the requirements of the assay, such as purification and quantifying the protein.
Integrating Advice: Dry Lab Experts
When it came to the modelling side of our project, we sought out interdisciplinary experts to meet the absence of substantive literature on protein structure and mathematical modelling. Before meeting with Brian Ee, we had planned to run molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to see how a dimer or complex of heat-shock proteins would interact with denatured proteins and at what temperatures they interacted. Brian helped us realise this was too ambitious of a goal for Phase I, and instead suggested we start with creating foundational models. Moreover, he helped us tweak the technical constraints of our models, which helped us improve the docking of our dimers, significantly improving our model as a whole. In addition, Brian provided us with sample scripts and helped us interpret MD results, which helped guide our modelling process at different stages throughout the year.
In terms of mathematical modelling, we reached out to Professor Mark Tanaka, who helped us validate our specific approach of using both deterministic and stochastic models. By validating the combination of these approaches, we were able to get the benefits of using them in tandem. In addition, he helped clarify details surrounding the stochastic Gillepsie algorithm, which significantly sped up our modelling process.
Our Proposed Implementation
It was important to our team that we considered all technical, safety, ethical and socio-cultural concerns regarding implementation. To ensure this was achieved, our team decided to implement a two-phase project.
In Phase I 2020, our team worked with the model organism, E. Coli, to solidify the foundations of our design. Phase II 2021, will see this knowledge expanded in ‘build’ and ‘test’ phases, when we apply these systems to Symbiodinium sp.
Throughout our project, our IHP journey has been entirely human-centred, and it was no different for proposed implementation. When considering implementation, going back to our stakeholders and experts helped us close the loop, and ensured that the ethical, technical, safety and communication decisions we made were informed by their values and needs.
The Office of the Gene Technology Regulator and Revive & Restore were instrumental in affirming the value of safety in a conservation solution. As a result, our team made the safety and technical decision to research and design a kill switch. Further safety considerations regarding the greater biodiversity were discussed as we re-connected with Lawrence Menz, who encouraged us to implement our solutions in locations with low biodiversity, to mitigate potential negative impacts on biodiversity. This reaffirmed the importance of biodiversity to multiple stakeholders, and would go on to inform the risk-averse three-stage approach of our proposed implementation.
In considering our social and communication decisions, Professor Matthew Kearnes helped us identify our two potential end-users based on our values of open-source science: the Australian government, and non-government organisations. Meanwhile, Associate Professor David Suggett reinforced the importance of stakeholder input, informing our science communication decisions.
With ethical, technical, safety and communication values in mind from these conversations, Melissa Katon’s discussion of the potential of ex-situ farming, informed how we designed our final risk-sensitive, three-stage proposed implementation: ex-situ testing; in-situ testing in multiple areas of low biodiversity; and in-situ release in an area of normal biodiversity.
To find out more about our values-driven proposed implementation, click Our Proposed Implementation.
Evaluation Of Our Project's Guiding Values
Working with our stakeholders helped us prioritise five main values we needed to incorporate into our solution. In order to close the loop and make sure our solution aligned with stakeholder needs, we made sure to evaluate our project in light of these values at each step of its development.
To create a solution that protects coral reefs from climate change, we implemented synthetic biology to engineer thermo-tolerant Symbiodinium for the neutralising of toxic ROS. While this does not solve the problem of climate change, it helps coral adapt to the effects of climate change, contributing to a global effort and aligning with stakeholder needs.
In order to engage respectfully with stakeholders during the development of our solution, we sought to learn about their contexts and hear from a range of voices within each stakeholder group. For example, it was important to us to hear from our Traditional Owners’, who have looked after the GBR for tens of thousands of years before us. In order to respectfully engage with them, it was important we didn’t pursue a solution without their input.
In order to produce a safe solution, it was vital we maintain both the biodiversity of the reef, as well as microbial interactions necessary to bioprospecting practices. In light of these points made by our stakeholders, our proposed implementation system will involve transferring our engineered Symbiodinium into a low-biodiverse marine environment for ex-situ testing, in order to manage negative effects. In addition, we designed a kill switch that enables us to kill our engineered algae if negative impacts are recorded.
To maintain the appearance of a natural landscape for tourism and local residents, we made sure to create a solution that looks completely natural. By engineering naturally-occuring microalgae, we not only have the potential to alleviate coral bleaching, but we also maintain natural appearances and uphold stakeholder needs.
While being financially viable and scalable was our lowest priority in a solution, we believe it is important in determining whether a solution can be realistically applied to the real world to make a positive impact. Throughout our project, we made decisions to keep our solution low in cost, which, in turn, increases its potential scalability. This included working with a cheap model organism, E. coli, as well as creating plans to share resources for implementation in Phase II.
Resolving The Disconnect Between Science and Society
We began our IHP journey with an exploration into the complex and dynamic relationship between people and science. To our team, coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef provided the perfect nexus between science and society. As we brought together science and stakeholders throughout the stages of our project, we noticed that there was an inherent disconnect.
Therefore, it was important in our project that we took action to close the loop between this disconnect between science and society. Our human-centred project has informed the way that we connect people with science. For example in our project, we designed a kill switch as a direct response to stakeholders’ values and concerns about safety of the coral, greater biodiversity and ecosystem. Not only did we want to make our science ‘safe’, but we wanted people to know that it was ‘safe’, because we heard their concerns. Further, identifying this disconnect informed the way in which we approached science communication as a tool to open conversation about the potential of synthetic biology. Click this link to explore our work in science communication.
Therefore, from what we learned, closing the loop means:
- Drawing out and empathising with people’s needs and values
- Responding directly with stakeholder concerns
- Engaging in science communication
As climate change continues to ravage the Australian, and global, natural environments, it is vital that science and society are connected. This year, the UNSW iGEM 2020 team has had the pleasure of observing, analysing and engaging with this complex dynamic of science and society. Through our own human-centred design, we have learnt that truly good and responsible things can be achieved when people and science come together - good things, such as healthy and thriving coral reefs.
