Team:TU Delft-Leiden/Human Practices

Policy & Practice

Synthetic biology research like our iGEM project does not happen in an isolated environment, but in a world in which synbio is a hot topic. The iGEM organization therefore stimulates to, besides doing science, also look beyond the bench and investigate the implications of your project on society. In this section of the wiki, called Policy&Practice, we will discuss these implications. In this overview section, we will describe the approach we have used in our Policy&Practice efforts, present the main results, and evaluate this part of the project.

Approach

All the scientific efforts in our project lead to the development of an application called ELECTRACE: a microbial biosensor which can be used outside a lab environment. For our P&P investigations, the main question we asked ourselves was how to get from a working prototype (our scientific end result) to a commercially viable application. To concretize this, we have zoomed in on a proof-of-principle application where ELECTRACE is used to detect landmines. To answer this question, we have interviewed various stakeholders. In this way, we hoped to get to know more about design requirements, commercialization procedures, legal obstacles and everything else that might come up.

Results

We have identified a great opportunity for a commercial application of synthetic biology: microbial biosensors that can be used outside a lab environment. The ELECTRACE system we have developed fits all the requirements we have defined for such an application: inexpensive, portable, easy to handle, easily quantifiable, and plug-and-play functionality. However, we have identified issues concerning the implementation of ELECTRACE regarding safety and commercial open source development. To further examine the ELECTRACE system, we investigated a possible application: landmine detection. We found that the ELECTRACE system is well-suited for the detection of landmines.

Investigating how to realize commercial application of the ELCTRACE system, we learned that there are some general issues concerning the implementation of synbio in everyday life. We found that, for synbio to succeed, things need to change in science-business cooperation, legislature and communication.

Evaluation

Interviewing different stakeholders and specialists turned out to be a very good way to see our project from different perspectives. The meetings with biosensor company BDS and the RIVM helped us identifying hurdles concerning implementation of the ELECTRACE system. The meeting with Prof.dr.ir. Ibo van Poel helped us to address the ethical issues surrounding our iGEM project. Also, meetings with the bomb experts of KMRD, EODD, and NPA, and the anti-landmine campaign organization PAX were found very useful in identifying the possibility for applying ELECTRACE to detect landmines. However, to suggest a possible improvement, getting in touch more with people involved in the more “commercial” side of synthetic biology would be extremely interesting.

In the end, our investigation of the policy and practice concerning our project was not only very interesting, it also helped us in directing our project to commercial application. This proved to be very helpful especially in the design stage of our gadget.