Take your iGEM Project to the next level!
Funded Collaboration
Due date: May 30, 2014
Questions: contact Virgil Rerimassie, <v.rerimassie AT rathenau.nl>
Is your iGEM team looking for an exciting Policy & Practices challenge? Would you like to take your project to the next level by exploring it with experts, policymakers, and the public? And would you like to get support and funding throughout this entire process? If your answer is "yes", your team might be an excellent candidate for our Call for Proposals.
Introduction
The Rathenau Instituut is a partner of SYNENERGENE, a four-year collaborative project funded by the European Commission, aimed at fostering Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in synthetic biology. In order to examine how SynBio can be optimally embedded in society, the Rathenau Instituut and its SYNENERGENE partners aim to conduct "Real-Time Technology Assessments" of potential SynBio applications. To this end, we seek collaboration with iGEM teams, and we will focus on promising ideas for SynBio applications as developed in iGEM projects. Teams can conduct real-time technology assessment in the Policy & Practices (formerly: "human practices") component of their project, and will be supported by SYNENERGENE partners throughout the process. Teams can apply for support and funding by submitting to us proposals.
Rewards and support
Awarded teams will receive €5.000 each and be assisted in their work by the Rathenau Instituut and other SYNENERGENE partners, providing them an excellent way to work on the Policy and Practices dimension of their project through real-time technology assessment, and to enhance the overall quality of their project.
Themes
For this first call we are especially looking for projects dedicated to fighting antibiotic resistance, the use of cyanobacteria as a chassis, and the use of SynBio for environmental conservation. Proposals relating to the three themes are given special preference, but ideas for other themes are also more than welcome! We hope for proposals from teams in the Health & Medicine, Energy, and Environment tracks, but also from teams in the Policy & Practices or Entrepreneurship tracks. (Teams from other tracks are also welcome to submit proposals!)
- Antibiotic resistance – Resistance to antibiotics is an increasing public health concern. SynBio may make valuable contributions to addressing this challenge. For example, by developing micro-organisms that produce novel antibiotics, or by creating alternatives to the use and over-use of antibiotics.
- Cyanobacteria – SynBio researchers have high hopes that cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) can become a new sustainable platform/chassis, to produce biofuels and other useful substances. How can cyanobacteria be made an important new chassis for iGEM as well?
- Environmental conservation – Recently, conservationists and synthetic biologists have started joining hands and exploring ways that SynBio can help protect the natural environment. For example, one of the ideas is using SynBio to tackle ocean dead zones, where marine life has been killed by harmful algal blooms. How could iGEM contribute to nature conservation?
Requirements
Each selected iGEM team will develop two different kinds of future scenarios relating to their project and its applications:
- Application scenarios
Application scenarios offer detailed and realistic descriptions of how SynBio applications could be fully deployed and embedded in society, including: design criteria for the products proposed, target manufacturers and users of the products, the needs and costs involved, legal issues of patenting, regulatory requirements, potential safety, social and ethical implications, and available or conceivable alternatives.
- Techno-moral scenarios
A techno-moral scenario is a story, artwork, or other tool to stimulate imagination, reflection and debate about ways in which SynBio applications may transform our society through wider impacts, including ethical, legal and social issues.
SYNENERGENE partners will take up the scenarios as a starting point for an interactive process of technology assessment, involving a variety of stakeholders and iGEM team members in workshop settings. The ultimate aim of these workshops is to develop socially robust agendas for SynBio innovation. The scenarios will also be used by SYNENERGENE partners as a tool in organizing public debates on the future of SynBio. Please expand the boxes below to read more about the scenarios that selected iGEM teams will deliver, and about the envisaged process of Real-Time Technology Assessment.
Application Scenarios
To develop application scenarios, you must identify and specify the practices and conditions in which particular SynBio applications envisaged by your team might be produced and used. What do these practices look like, who is involved in what role, and how will these practices be changed and affected by the new applications? Knowledge about the experiences and visions of actors involved in these practices is vital for the development of application scenarios. Below are two descriptions of work that previous teams have done to develop ideas about the future application of their projects. These examples illustrate our notion of an "Application Scenario".
The Bristol team developed E. coli bacteria that are able to detect and signal the presence of nitrates in soil. Encapsulated in small beads, agrEcoli bacteria may be mixed with seeds and spread simultaneously on the land. The bacteria express fluorescent signals upon nutrient detection, and thus may allow farmers to map soil nutrient content of their fields and optimize their fertilizer use. Applied in this way, agrEcoli bacteria may help to reduce excess fertilizer use, to the benefit of both farmers and the environment.
Based on wet lab and modelling work, the team produced a functioning prototype, which in the lab could successfully detect and react to nutrient levels in the soil. Going further, the team specified the hypothetical properties that their product should possess for a successful market introduction, using predictions based on their prototype and information about how farmers might wish to use it. The team chose smaller-scale farmers as the target market for their product, and accordingly specified the engineering requirements that the product would have to satisfy, given established practices of farming and important conditions of cost and safety. The team also compared their approach to existing methods of estimating the nutrient needs of arable land (such as satellite imaging).
Thus, the team ended with a final specification for how their product would work, the form it would take, and the tests it would have to pass before coming to market. Based on this application scenario, the team decided to examine issues of public perception in order to find out how to get public support for their hypothetical product. They examined the results of public perception studies, and translated those results into the design of a product information leaflet that might be used in a public awareness campaign. Finally, the team considered some of the legislative and regulatory hurdles that would have to be considered in developing their agrEcoli bacteria for commercial release.
The ICL team engineered E.coli bacteria to accelerate plant root development by three steps. Firstly, the bacteria respond to a chemical released by the roots of germinating seed, whereby the bacteria are actively taken up by the roots. Secondly, the bacteria express auxin, a plant hormone which promotes root formation. Thirdly, a safety mechanism was designed to prevent horizontal gene transfer from the modified bacteria to native soil bacteria. AWK By sowing seeds coated with the modified bacteria in areas at risk of erosion, plants may increase the stability of soil as a result of enhanced root growth. In this way engineered E.coli bacteria may help to prevent soil erosion and desertification, a massive problem in arid parts of the world.
The team considered Policy & Practices work to be crucial for the framing of their project, and to ensure that the design of the AuxIn system would respect all relevant social, ethical and legal issues. For example, they considered the relative advantages of using engineered bacteria rather than engineered plants. Existing approaches to improve drought-tolerant crop plants via genetic engineering might be a viable alternative to the AuxIn project. However, to fight a world-wide problem such as desertification would require a lot of different plant species to be engineered, and some plants may be very difficult to engineer genetically. Using a bacterial delivery system based on naturally existing symbiosis between bacteria and plants might help to overcome these difficulties.
While the AuxIn project remained at a proof-of-concept stage, the team undertook a number of activities with the aim to develop a future implementation plan for their product, taking into account specifications of seed coat design, local conditions and practices of planting in regions where the product would be used, issues of patenting, and environmental safety requirements. A special and highly important component of the team’s Policy & Practices work was to consult often during the early design stages with plant scientists, ecologists, social scientists, and NGO's. The team held two discussion panels and visited Syngenta, a company specialising in agricultural products and research. The team also undertook several outreach activities, including the writing of a script set in a future world where the technology designed in the project has been widely implemented.
Techno-Moral Scenarios
While application scenarios focus on the concrete prospects and challenges of a specific SynBio application, "Techno-Moral Scenarios" highlight the wider ways in which a future SynBio application may transform society. Techno-moral scenarios explore the ways in which new technologies may challenge and shape what we want, how we relate to each other, and how we relate to the world. Thus, they invite audiences to imagine and evaluate ways in which particular SynBio applications might change our world, our ideas, values and ideals. For an example of fully developed techno-moral scenarios, consider this series of short stories ('vignettes') published by the Rathenau Instituut, one of which was contributed by the UCL 2012 team (creators of the AuxIn project).
Real-Time Technology Assessment
Based on collaboration with selected iGEM teams, a process of real time technology assessment involves the following four steps:
- Selected iGEM teams develop application and techno-moral scenarios that will be taken up by SYNENERGENE partners as a starting point for stakeholder and public engagement with the future of synthetic biology.
- SYNENERGENE partners organize interactive processes of mutual learning and assessment, by involving scientists and engineers (including members of iGEM teams) in workshops with industry, end users, policy makers, and civil society groups. In these workshop discussions, the scenarios will be confronted with critical societal perspectives, thus providing valuable input to enhance the viability and success of ideas for SynBio innovation developed by iGEM teams.
- The input from the workshop discussions will be used by SYNENERGENE partners to further develop the scenarios into proposals for socially robust and responsible agendas for innovation. These agendas may serve as a source of inspiration for future research in iGEM and in the wider SynBio community. Therefore, these agendas will be promoted through the SYNENERGENE network, publications in scientific and professional journals, and in contacts with European and National Research Councils.
- Techno-moral scenarios will be used by SYNENERGENE partners as a tool in organizing public debates about potential futures for SynBio innovation in society.
Proposal and application
Interested iGEM teams may submit a proposal (2 page A4, one thousand words maximum), including:
- A description of the intended SynBio project
- Potential applications of the project
- An indication of practices, actors, regulations and impacts that will be addressed in application and techno-moral scenarios.
Please send your proposal to <synenergene (AT) igem (DOT) org> by May 30, 2014.
More information
If you need more information or have any questions, please contact Virgil Rerimassie at the Rathenau Instituut: <v.rerimassie (AT) rathenau.nl>
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