Science Café at The CUT, Halesworth

NRP-UEA iGEM attendees: Jack Day, Steven Monsey, Richard Bowater (Advisor)

What was the aim of our Science Cafe?

On the 18th of September 2014 we once again ventured out to The Cut in Halesworth; this time to facilitate a more in-depth discussion in a ‘Science Café’ style debate on the topics surrounding our project, which included: genetic modification of plants and other organisms, crop disease, food security, the ethics behind scientific discovery and the way scientists conduct their research. The Science Cafe was also a great opportunity to build on the feedback from our project from the last event at The Cut, as well as presenting our project to a new audience. The event attracted a varied mix of members of the public of all ages from Halesworth and beyond.

Steven and Jack outside of The Cut before Science Café begins.

What were the nights events?

The night began with a presentation from Steven, a student member of the NRP-UEA iGEM team who gave an extensive talk on our summer project. Following the presentation, a natural debate formed in discussion with the audience in which Steven and a further iGEM student team member Jack answered questions posed by the audience, ranging from ethical issues to the science of synthetic biology and cloning.

What feedback did we receive on the Green Canary as a viable product for distribution?

The audience proved very enthusiastic and interested in hearing about the iGEM organisation and our project inparticular. The session proved to be a brilliant brainstorm for the issues we would need to address if we were to continue developing the Green Canary as a viable product, ready for distribution. Our team members scribed many of the audiences comments during the discussion and a varied selection of these comments are presented below:

Can the canary plant detect disease a lot earlier than the main crop so that there was a big enough window to allow spraying to happen and to protect the crop without crop loss?

The concept may work for some crop diseases, such as those propagated by the target bacteria, but would it work for others carried into the plants by insect vectors?

Would the fact that this plant is not a crop mean that it would avoid legislation involved or associated with GM crops?

Some agrochemicals currently used by farmers are thiocyanides and there are implicit health costs associated with indiscriminate use for farmers and agricultural workers, so the canary plants would help reduce this.

Indicator plants would need to have the same growth pattern and growth span as the crop which it is an indicator and this would need to be a major consideration in the final design.

The idea of having rainbow indicators so an indicator plant that could detect more than one disease and indicate the disease it was detecting was thought to be a valuable concept.

How would the canary plants be delivered to the farmers? Would it be transported as a plant? Would it be transported as seeds?

Considering the third world audience and problems targeted by the green canary project, there would need to be a set of educational packages and supporting mechanisms available to farmers to ensure that the ‘canary plants’ were used effectively and well – some of these points could be quite simple. For example how and when should they be planted? What does it mean when the plants change colour? What would you do to change the treatment plans or what do you do after you spot or see a certain colour change?

Concern that indicators may not be ideal for people that are colour blind, which affects a significant amount of the population.

Would the indicator crops be lost or revert back to wild type after disease detection?

Would it affect other animals if they decided to eat it? How would it be made unattractive to other animals who might consume the Green Canary?

What issues were raised by some members of the audience during the Science Cafe?

Some members of the audience had real concerns about the idea and philosophy of having technology that was freely available to be used by anyone anywhere. They saw the potential that ‘big business’ could potentially take on the ideas being produced by the iGEM teams and exploit it for ‘big business’ ends and means.

The audience were also concerned that the iGEM Foundation/teams were not taking enough responsibility when it came to these concerns. They wanted to know what iGEM was doing to stop any of the scientific advances that have emerged from the programme to be used in potentially unethical or dangerous ways? Was iGEM taking no regulatory role in this at all? Members of our audience felt that the iGEM committee should consider these issues as their role is to act as guardian for the common good.

What did our iGEM team learn from this event?

The NRP-UEA iGEM team came away from the event with a much better understanding of the issues of producing a viable product for distribution. Additionally, ethical issues were raised by members of the audience with a farming background which proved vital when assessing the ethical viability of a plant sentinel.

The event was such a success, that the Science Cafes will continue at The Cut on a regular basis in the future, discussing a wide variety of subjects including synthetic biology and the global issue of food security.

Next Event: http://newcut.org/events/entry/2049
Visit The Cut Website: http://newcut.org/

Team:NRP-UEA-Norwich/HP Science-Cafe

From 2014.igem.org