Our policy and practices project began very early on in 2014 when the team initially came together and decided on the involvement of the student community here in Sheffield. To select the project we would tackle, we took the initiative of asking university students what every day issue they would like to see solved using synthetic biology. This received a lot of feedback providing us with many options to research further. Fig. 1 shows a breakdown of the responses we received which were quite varied. Many fell into the “Student Struggles” category as they related to waking up early and missing lectures; problems which synthetic biology may be able to address in the future! Other popular responses included hands smelling of garlic even after washing multiple times, lack of Wi-Fi and food going mouldy too soon. Interestingly, we only received one response out of 140, which was cautious of the use of genetically engineered bacterium with concerns relating to potential mutations in the future that may create danger to humans and the environment. We followed up on this by gauging faculty attitudes within the university regarding the use synthetic biology to solve social problems.

Accumulation of fats and hair in drains was one of the suggestions which stood out to the team and given the relevance of this issue to ourselves as well as the majority of the public, this was selected; as a gesture of appreciation for helping to kick-start the project, the student was rewarded with £10 for their contribution.

This process of feedback continued throughout the project, with other major influences coming from industry and academic consultation, a report into the balance of responsibility between major stakeholders, standardising lab notation and collaboration, amongst others.

SocioBricks

From the onset, there was a heavy focus on the policy and practices aspect of the project as science communication is vital for the successful implementation of any synthetic biology development into the real world. As a team comprised of entirely science and engineering students, we wanted to understand this area better and individually researched previous iGEM projects. Our research concluded that team methods and outputs were very diverse, each with different backgrounds and motivations as to why they were carried out.

To make policy and practices more accessible and easier to understand for all students and advisors taking part, we have created a novel way of characterising and standardising this component: SocioBricks.

Our Concept

SocioBricks are analogous to BioBricks, and perform a particular function within the policy and practice projects; these parts can be selected and arranged into a construct to help guide teams with their different initiatives. A user can browse through the registry we have created as proof of concept to select parts from the different collections available:

• Framework – this will provide a background and basis for the work you choose to do from social research to outreach within schools
• Ethics – some frameworks require you to follow specific codes of conduct; these SocioBricks ensure that all activities are carried out ethically and morally
• Methods – these are very diverse ranging from research methods to answer a social question and speaking to industry experts, as well as, public engagement
• Analysis – all research carried out will be subject to analysis. This may be quantitative or qualitative and relates back to the initial framework; some framework bricks suggest which analysis parts are most compatible
• Outputs – the communication of the work done can be output in several forms. In this collection, the user can find examples effective outputs from previous iGEM teams

The SocioBrick registry is based on the philosophy of the current BioBrick registry: we hope for it to be a continuously growing, community collection of parts that can be mixed and matched to generate successful policy and practice projects. During the project, we noticed some of the ‘Ethics’ parts were lacking from other teams when collaborating, even though they are highly important – this standardised approach will help to ensure project work is completed morally and ethically.

Below are examples of ‘constructs’ we have created and used to define how we conducted parts of our project:

Manufacturing Model

Notions of Responsibility Study

Industry Collaboration

Outreach

Our Vision

We hope for this registry to be taken on by iGEM to allow future teams to access what we have produced so far and add to it through user testing and characterisation of parts, similar to what has been done with the BioBrick registry. This information would then be displayed on the ‘Experience’ page of the registry, which currently is incomplete. This is vital information necessary to show how a part can be used to its full potential, real-life examples of successful applications as well as what it’s downfalls may be and would allow teams to carry out policy and practice projects to their full potentials.