Difference between revisions of "Team:NDNF China/Human Practices"

Overview

Since our team focuses on bio-safety and wishes to expand it to the general public, it is crucial for us to integrate different opinions from both professionals and the public into every stage of the project. To prevent engineered organisms from escaping requires technical work as well as combined efforts of the public and government agencies.

In order for us to accurately meet the needs of the public and address their concerns, we utilized the Internet to survey the general public on their opinions regarding synthetic biology. Furthermore, we gathered information on their pre-knowledge on synthetic biology so that we could improve the design of our education program.

Another challenge we faced was the lack of knowledge concerning legal documents, cooperative actions with government agencies and synthetic biology companies. We consulted several professionals from both the legal sector and the biological corporations. Thus, our project consists of many parts, all of which were finalized and adapted into a result of interviews, surveys and conversations with the general public, legal professionals and pioneers of the industry. We are always aware of the impacts and contributions our product could bring to society and we will always try to improve our project over time.

Research and Design

We designed a number of human practice events to generated positive feedback on the establishment of our project and prompted optimization of it.

Questionnaires

Through questionnaires, we realized that people lack understanding of biosafety laws, distrust of synthetic biology products.

Goal

The goal of the project(this suevey) is to help synthetic biology get out of the laboratory and make important contributions in practical applications. First, we analyzed the limitations of synthetic biology in daily life through questionnaires and public surveys.

Our survey included 15 multiple choice questions, which were designed to measure the public's knowledge on synthetic biology and their opinion concerning bio-products in general and our products in specific.

Conclusion

1. The general public has limited knowledge on biosafety, and many——over 97%——are willing to increase their knowledge of biosafty through social media.

2. Besides, the general public have a relatively low proportion of awaring the law relavent to biosafty, which conducted by the government.

With the same pace on experiments research, we had responsibility of popularization of biosafty law and enhanced trust on synthetic biology amoung public, and thus promote synthetic biology applications beyond the laboratory, letting engineered microbes say hi to the world. Conclusively, we were determined to use HP promotions to aid in social applications.

Public understanding of biosafety

Communicate with experts

Besides, we learned about the development history, application prospects and key challenges of synthetic biology through expert interviews.

Fankang Meng: PhD in Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Our tutor Fankang Meng provided us with valuable knowledge based on his own first-hand experiences making bio-products. After a 30 minute long conversation, we gained a considerable amount of knowledge on synthetic biology on the field. We learned that contamination and possible escape are the key factors in the application of synthetic biology, providing us with a potential focus in later development of our program.

Other synthetic biology scholars, synthetic biology industry

Left: Dr. Haoqian Zhang; right: Haotian Guo

After communicating with Professor Meng, we also consulted with many scholars in the field of synthetic biology and related people in the industry. Among them are Dr. Haoqian Zhang (founder and CEO of Blue Crystal Microbe), Haotian Guo (founder and CEO of Red Panda Biology), Xiaoyu Wang (founder of SynbioUK, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT) and Zongying Yang (biotech investor). According to them, there are three main problems facing the successful development of synthetic biology products to move out of the laboratory and into the real world:

1. Regulatory or safety risks caused by biosafety

2. Synthetic biology products cannot adapt to the constantly fluctuating environment of natural conditions

3. Unable to effectively track or control the dynamic process of synthetic biology products in the real environment

With the survey and interviewing with biologists, we determined the central topic of our project and the essential problem we need to solve.

Project Design

Contact original authors

Exchanging emails with authors who develop technologies related to our program: During project design and experiment, we encountered many problems. We solved these problems through emails, etc., and received effective suggestions and feedback.

Professor Zhao provided us with a lot of experimental details and original experimental methods, and gave us many opinions and suggestions on optimizing the preparation of Hidro. Moreover, he affirmed our method of mass preparation of Hirdo by using molds. He believed that: Using the mold to prepare not only can shorten the time, but also can prepare more complete Hidro at one time, effectively avoiding leakage caused by uneven shell and experimental operation.

Mr.Zhao Xuanhe

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

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Public Activities

Legal proposal

Background

At present, the attention of all sectors of society to biosafety is gradually increasing, so we tried to produce our biosafety law proposal. This action not only conformed to the international views, but also contributed our own strength to biosafety as high school students. At the same time, our project is closely related to biosafety. We aim to prevent the escape of microorganisms and improve current tracing system through our product, providing safer material for synthetic biology.

Through reviewing related data and closely studying the Tianjin Biosecurity Guideline for Codes of Conduct for Scientists recently developed by Tianjin University, we have come to the realization that it is necessary to help the public regain trust and hope in biotech driven applications by providing sources to relevant knowledge while also enhancing current biosafety regulations.

What we do

Based on the above considerations, we have proposed the following suggestions aiming to further perfect some aspects of the current biosafety legislation (of China). Despite being high school students, we still hope we can be involved in aiding current regulations to keep pace with frontlines of biotechnological development.

Through the process of polishing our proposal, we interviewed a few experts in biosafety field, who offered us precious and effective advice, which played an significant role in guiding our optimatzing of proposal.

The experts we interviewed

Mr.Bao Hanyu

Governance of Synthetic Biology. Global Envrionment Governance. Science, Technology and Innovation Policy.

Mr.Liang Yang

College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, B.E. in Biological Engineering.

Intellectual Property Research Institute, Xiamen University, J.M. in Intellectual Property Law Research Directions

Intellectual Property Law, Biosecurity Law, Policies on Synthetic Biology.

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Public engagement

CCiC

On Oct.27, our team participated in the CCIC for IGEM teams in China. During the event, we shared our project and experiences in human practice with other teams. Moreover, we are able to communicate with professionals working in related sectors and gain their help in future programs.

Popularization at school

As our survey shows, the general public lacks knowledge on synthetic biology. As a key future consumer and producer in synthetic biology, students, especially high school students, are obligated to learn more about bio-safety. Thus we planned several off-line programs at local high schools. The program contains two lectures and one orientation. These programs mainly focus on the current status of synthetic biology, codes including the crucial Tianjin guidelines, and they introduced them to our program. After our lecture, a vast majority of students felt that they have gained a considerable amount knowledge on biosafety, and many believed that they will be willing to use these bio-products due to their feasibility.

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Stakeholder Feedback

After completing the design of Hidro, we will organize the relevant information and experimental data into a file, and send it to synthetic biologists and biotech entrepreneurs for suggestions about the three main characteristics of Hidro (biosafety, stability and tracibility). They are very interested in the three features of Hidro, and believe that Hidro has promoted the process of practical application of synthetic biology products to some extent (out of 10, get a median of 7).

What is most exciting for us is that 91.7% of all interviewees indicated that if their future design includes the potential application of Hidro, such as various tests and in vivo drugs, they are willing to include Hidro system in product design.

In addition, we also received a lot of questions and comments. Some people asked whether Hidro has a relatively complete product form. Here, we completed a preliminary product model of food detection system in cooperation with GCGS team (see more information please visit the Partnership page). Some scholars are curious about whether Hidro shell thickness affects the sensitivity of Biosensor, which we have been thinking about. Limited by the time, we had not related experiments, but in the subsequent we will research into this field, and find the most suitable thickness of the shell, ensuring Hidro basis function without influencing the sensitivity.