Human practices

Values

Like any other team, this season began for us with the choice of a topic, and we talked a lot about what to highlight our project and what problem to undertake. We talked about cancer and weight loss methods and many other things. And despite the fact that we are in 2021 and the coronavirus is raging outside the window, we were still most concerned about how to protect ourselves from ionizing radiation. We admired the tardigrades and their ability to survive even in space. And we understand that one of the main keys to space exploration lies precisely in solving this problem. How's that for you, Elon Musk?

This is our first iGEM season and in it, we faced a number of problems at once:

Pandemic. Because of it, it was difficult to get the reagents we needed, since most companies in Russia are busy with the issue of the coronavirus pandemic. And, accordingly, it is not easy to organize the work of the team, especially in the laboratory.
Trust. It was difficult for us to find sponsors since we were at iGEM for the first time and people hardly believed us since they had not worked with us before. Additionally, MEPhI is not a biological university, and this raised questions.

And, nevertheless, we have reached the end, and you are now reading this text on our wiki page.

All this time we have been consistently working on our project and striving to make it as best and feasible as possible.

Our core values are Relevance, Reliability, Safety.

We chose this topic as soon as it was voiced. No one had any doubts that the idea was extremely relevant, in demand and no one had ever done anything like this before.

The relevance of our topic is difficult to dispute. Every day we face ionizing radiation, its influence, and its consequences. There are a huge number of nuclear power plants around us. Today, brachytherapy is used to fight cancer. People live in places with a highly inflated radiation background. And, of course, a person's gaze is directed to the sky. Our development would greatly help in human space exploration.

We ensured reliability due to continuous work with experts. We interviewed experts from various fields. We listened to their opinion and feedback about our idea and work, to get a good result.

Safety. Our system works based on natural human mechanisms and affects its natural microbiome.

Our goal is to make human life easier and better. In addition to space exploration, there are many areas and situations where our development can be useful and even vital. Someday it will become an integral part of our life (during the colonization of Mars, for example).

Our influence: as we have already said, first of all, this will provide great support in space exploration and beginners flight to Mars, in particular, in case of accidents at nuclear power plants, people will be able to protect themselves from ionizing radiation, and cancer patients will no longer feel the side effects of therapy.

In the future, we plan to make our development even more perfect than it is now.

Expert rewies

Expert opinion is appreciated in any field of human activity. We are passionate about our idea and strive to bring them to life. Therefore, we cannot imagine the realization of our core values without working with experts. We need to be sure that our idea is relevant. Only experts in the relevant fields can confirm or refute our theories. For the same reason, we cannot talk about reliability and security if we do not communicate with specialists. Our team firmly believes that a good project can be created only with high-quality work with experienced people. And it is important not only to listen to what they say but also to follow their advice - this is the right way to create a reliable and safe product.

And now in more detail. Our experts are: Olga Orlova, Sergey Ponomarev, and Maximov Oleg.

Orlova Olga
Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, St.Petersburg State University.

The basis of her professional activity is teaching medical microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine and scientific activities related to the study of bacterial biofilms.

Our first question to Olga was, of course, about the relevance of our topic. This is one of our core values. It is important for us to solve the burning problems of humanity. The answer was as follows “The project is definitely useful, demanded and necessary. A person meets increased radiation and other extreme situations not only in space but also in ordinary terrestrial conditions. And in these cases, they must be protected not only physically, that is by external attributes, but also on the biological level. And this is a higher level of development of science, which is associated with a deeper understanding of what is happening in the human body.”

We talked for a long time with Olga. She not only shares our position about the relevance of our project but also treats it with great approval and trust, which indicates the reliability of our system. She also gave a number of tips for improving our system. You’ll find this information in Integrated Human Practices.

Sergey Ponomarev, Ph.D., MD
Head of the Laboratory of the Immune system physiology,
Institute of Bio-Medical Problems, Russia

"The presented project "Microbiome Induced Space Suit" is a leap into the future that links human physiology, immunology, and microbiology in a single symbiotic platform. The idea of the use of gene-modified microbiota to induce human radioresistance is precisely the innovation that humanity so desperately needs today for long-term space exploration.

However, it must be acknowledged that ideas to create symbiotic life support systems on space stations have been expressed before. Still, only today the technical capabilities of humankind open the way to the physical embodiment of this unbelievable dream.

I would recommend that the Microbiome Induced Space Suit project's team consider the interaction between genetically engineered microbiota strains and the cosmonaut/astronaut/taikonaut's immune system since immune responses are crucial to regulating human health in space flights."

Maximov Oleg
Leading engineer for the control unit of a floating nuclear thermal power plant. The city of Pevek, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.
Rosenergoatom, the electric power division of ROSATOM State Corporation

“We believe that an innovative solution in the project may be the creation of a human microbiota with the function of secreting radioprotectors, the delivery of a genetic construct to modify the human microbiota in bacteriophages, or the delivery of genetic material on silicon nanoparticles.

This project will be the first project in Obninsk at the junction of radiology and genetic engineering – a promising area that will be in demand for the rehabilitation of patients after radiotherapy and long-term human exploration of outer space. In addition, the concept of genetically engineered radioresistant solutions proposed in the project will also be in demand in order to reduce the consequences of man-made disasters associated with the risks of radiation exposure to humans.”

Addition

Work with the beginners

We called the newbies the younger generation that will apply our development in the future. And so it will be, we are sure!

Our newcomers were: students of grades 10-11 of the city of Obninsk from the bio-school and just from the secondary school, students of the biological quantorium, as well as students of the biological and medical faculties at the IATE of MEPhI.

Why do we think this is important?

We live in the age of information and science in all its manifestations. And 2020 marked the beginning of the active development of biology as a science that can improve a person's life and save his health. Our team is confident that this trend will continue for a very long time. And in order to comfortably exist in such a world, people must be aware of what is happening around them and be aware of new developments in order to keep the brain flexible and expand the boundaries of their knowledge. We are aimed specifically at potential biologists and physicians, as they will continue the current trends.

We started with school children. First of all, we asked about their hobbies: academic and general, and tried to connect them with how they can apply them on iGEM. After all, you don't have to be a pro in your field to do something worthwhile. We talked about iGEM in terms of how to implement yourself and your skills in it.

After that, we had a conversation about our project. The children were interested in listening to us and our development itself sparked their interest. They asked a lot of questions and were genuinely interested in what we were telling them.

We also talked about iGEM and the project to the students of our university.

The content of our report can be viewed here:

Below you can read the feedback from the listeners and their opinion about what we have presented to them: “I came for a story about a project related to cosmic radiation. I was very interested in this topic. I liked it very much. I want to make such a project in the future too”

“I liked it very much. Interested in the iGEM contest. I will definitely participate. I wish you good luck in the development of the project”

“I learned a lot of interesting things about the international competition. I want to participate. The guys can't answer all our questions yet, as the project needs to be developed. I would also like to hear more about the contest.”

Interview

One of the parts of our Human Practices was an interview for Medach Channel (the official channel of the medical portal Medach). In this interview, we talked about our idea, the reasons for choosing such a topic, and much more. You can read it here: (link)

We believe that an important part of our work is in the presentation of the project since Medach is a portal for young doctors and students of medical universities, whose task is to introduce people to the achievements of modern medicine, exchange knowledge between participants, as well as the release of materials that facilitate educational and practical activities. In fact, experts in the field are also interested in Medach, and it's cool to read it not only to doctors. Thus, a large number of experts and newcomers will get acquainted with our work. And this is very important and healthy for the development of our activities.

Integrated Human Practices

In the previous sections, we talked about our work with experts. media and newcomers. It's time to analyze in more detail the influence of experts on our work.

Each of the experts supported our idea. But support, although important, is not a key part in working with experts. The key point: the advice given by experts, as well as their ideas for improving our system.

We have received the following recommendations:

In accordance with the recommendations of Olga Orlova, we removed the kanamycin gene from the plasmid vector, which will be tested on a rat model. We removed the kanamycin resistance gene from the final vector because bacteria are able to share plasmids and we don't need to spread this ability inside bacteria that make up the gut microbiota as well as bacteria in the environment. Otherwise, it can turn into a lot of problems for humanity.
For human safety reasons we designed an alternative system for the delivery of radioprotective proteins to the human intestine, which does not need additional regulatory elements as part of the plasmid vector. You can use lactobacteria instead of E.Coli in the case when a person is not exposed to radiation for a long time and we don't need a long-term effect. Lactobacteria is not able to integrate into biofilm, so the proteins will be secreted just while the person takes our bacteria. Also, in this case, we don't need an inducible promoter. The induced promoter is not needed in this case, because the activity time of Lacto- and bifidobacteria in the human intestine is several hours and is comparable in duration with the activation time of the inducible promoter.
In accordance with the opinion of an expert from ROSATOM, Maximov Oleg, we decided to use biocompatible silicon nanoparticles as an alternative delivery method. The advantages of this system are the safety of silicon nanoparticles for humans and the better penetration ability of RNAs immobilized on nanoparticles into human cells in comparison with RNAs produced by bacterial cells. As a consequence, the risk of an interferon response from the human immune system decreases as it is possible to use a smaller number of microRNAs to regulate the activity of radioprotective genes, and also to use alternative methods of introducing nanoparticles in emergency cases (not through the intestine, but intramuscularly or intravenously).
We had also received a recommendation from Sergey Ponomarev to investigate the interaction of genetically modified bacteria with the human immune system since immune reactions are crucial for regulating human health in space flights. We have conducted a literary study to answer this question. Here's what we found out.E.coli themselves will not cause an immune reaction, since they already live in our intestines. But there may be some with our inserts in the vector. In our genetic vector, we use microRNA. As micro RNA is a double-stranded molecule in some cases the mammalian immune system can perceive such molecules as a viral attack triggering an interferon response and other reactions. For this reason, we planned to conduct additional tests of each insert to trigger the interferon response and analyze the inflammatory response using real-time PCR and ELISA methods.