FAQs

• General FAQs
• In-depth FAQs

Questions we chose to address:

Identifying their relevance, rationale & assumptions, methodologies and references

1. What is the current level of awareness that university students have towards Biotech, SynBio and GMOs?

It’s important to know the level of approval and understanding about SynBio and related topics because this information can be used as a tool in programs such as regulatory policy development and its advertisement. Knowing how informed or not is a population will dictate the severity of the regulatory process and how it is advertised. This can also help governments to know which kind of educational programs are going to be more effective in order to help people develop a better criteria about SynBio based upon reliable information and avoiding the distortion of public perception caused by popular media.

Rationale and Assumptions

Since Synthetic Biology (SynBio) is not as old as other related sciences, many people around the world are just getting an idea about what SynBio is. According to the context and environment of the people, the public perception that they get will be positive or negative.

If people are more aware about the benefits and possible hazards regarding SynBio, risk assessments will be required to be less strict because it will be more focused on controlling the hazards that have a more logical causal connection.

Methodology

To have a better idea of how we did the public perception statistical analisis please follow the next link:
https://2014.igem.org/Team:Zamorano/PerceptionMethodology

2. How can we improve local public perception towards Synthetic Biology?

Improving public perception is fundamental for biosciences’ regulations to have the desire effects. It is important to give unbiased information to people, so that they can make informed decisions on whether to foment or prevent the development of this science.

Rationale and assumptions

Deficient public perception in Latin America has halted development of biotechnology. People didn’t count with enough unbiased information to decide whether it was safe to use or not. Regulations in most countries have made it so that biotech projects need excessive documentation to be performed. We are concerned about improving SynBio public perception because we don’t want what happened with Biotech to happen again.

Methodology

Different approaches were taken to improve awareness towards SynBio. We have developed several educational activities in to educate local and regional population.

The completed activities so far include:

• Activities performed with elementary students: games and laboratory practices were developed to familiarize them with biotech terminologies from an early age.

• Laboratory practices: The team imparted several workshops for children aged 10 to 12 year, specially designed to be easy to understand and to perform.

  For more detailed information regarding the completed activities, please follow this link (https://2014.igem.org/Team:Zamorano/EducationPerformedPractices)

We have also planned activities for next year. They are:

• Work module: Zamorano has a system called “learning by doing”, which allows the student to learn by himself. It states that people learn better about something, if they do it themselves; hence the name. We propose the creation of a synthetic biology for third year students. It is an advanced biotechnology module with emphasis on environmental science. The proposition got accepted.

  For more detailed information regarding the completed activities, please follow this link (https://2014.igem.org/Team:Zamorano/Educationworkmodule)

• Training courses: Zamorano University will impart training courses for all people interested in learning about synthetic biology. The courses are focused on a very heterogenic group of people; students and teachers from different ages, majors and universities. Many different types of training courses were planned.

  For more detailed information regarding the completed activities, please follow this link (https://2014.igem.org/Team:Zamorano/EducationTrainingcourses)

3. Is our copper biosensor a risk to society? Can there be an alternative method to perform a risk assessment on these Living Modified Organisms than the one proposed by the Cartagena Protocol?

Current regulations are too strict; ask for unnecessary paperwork. This tedious regulations slows down development of biotech, and might jeopardize development of synbio. Our modified bacterium was developed upon a non-pathogenic E. Coli. In consequence, it does not represent a risk to society. None the less, we conducted a responsible risk assessment in order to determine the risks that our bacterium may represent to society. Two approaches were compared to perform the environmental risk assessment (ERA): the ERA guide proposed by the Cartagena Protocol and the Latin America ERA guide proposed by 14 expert scientists. The current risk assessment method suggested by the Cartagena Protocol is quite extensive. It tries to take into considerations all possible hazards. But in its quest to do so, it includes hazards that are possible but not realistic; and the process becomes over strict and tedious.

Rationale and assumptions
Experiments in new fields of study like synthetic biology raise a lot of questions regarding biosafety. Therefore, coherent and effective ways to evaluate the risk an organisms represents are necessary. Currently, the one environmental risk assessment proposed by the Cartagena Protocol is too unnecessarily strict.

Honduras, being the only country with approved GMOs for commercial release, has a well-developed and mature legislation in comparison to other countries of Central and South America. Simplifying the process of evaluating the risk of an organism and submitting it to a government entity, as the Honduras legislation has done, improve the investigation process. If the process becomes easier and more dynamic, a wider audience of people will be able to perform these kinds of assessments.

Methodology
We chose to adapt the assessment upon the Latin America ERA guide due to it been more simple and dynamic than the one of the Cartagena Protocol. It is so simple that inexperienced youngsters are able to make coherent, government-approved risk assessments.

For more detailed information about our methodology please follow the next link: https://2014.igem.org/Team:Zamorano/RiskMethodology

References:

For the public perception analysis bibliography that we consulted please follow the next link:

https://2014.igem.org/Team:Zamorano/PerceptionBibliography

For The Risk Assessment section of our project bibliography follow the next link:

https://2014.igem.org/Team:Zamorano/Bibliography