Bronze medal

• We have registered our team

• We have completed the judging form

• We have produced a team wiki

• We will be presenting a poster and a talk at the iGEM jamboree

• We have described our project and attributed all our work

• We have submitted nine new parts to the registry, all of which are documented on our parts page

Silver medal

• We have successfully shown that LacRS(BBa_K1526009) and cysP (BBa_K1526003) are working as expected

• We are working on completing the characterization of LacRS(BBa_K1526009) and cysP (BBa_K152600) as well as the rest of our parts in the registry

• We have submitted our parts to the registry and have received confirmation of acceptance on 8 out of 9.

• We have carried out ethics and sustainability surveys in order to determine what factors have the greatest impact in how the general public perceives GMOs and what approaches would be more likely to bring the public on board with our project, as well as with other initiatives that use GMOs in bioremediation.

Gold medal

Is it ethical and would the public support releasing GMOs into the water supply?

As part of our human practices we looked at ethics and sustainability. Our project involves bioremediation of toxic substances from wastewater. As part of this project we had to look at the feasibility of using our bacteria in commercially. We realised that in order for our project to work we would have to release the engineered E.coli into water supply. Therefore, we had to determine whether this would be ethical, whether it’s advantages outbalance its downsides and whether the public would support this initiative.

Our Approach and Evaluation of our approach

The approach we used was to send out surveys to members of the public. we did this by posting surveys in groups on Facebook, getting our members to give surveys to people they knew and spreading them on online social networks and forums such as The Student Room, Imgur and Tumblr, as well as on GMO debating websites.

While this approach got us a considerable number of responses we found that the majority of the responses were from similar age groups, possibly representative of the demographics that are more likely to use online social media. 55% of our responders were in the 18-24 years old category, 25% were between 25 and 34 and 10% between 35 and 44. 5.6 % were younger than 18 and only 4% of responders were older than 44. In spite of the fact that most of the responders were from adjacent categories(18-24 and 25-34), our analysis did find significant differences between age groups, but only with regard to attitude towards environmental conservation projects.

In order to decide whether or not it would be ethical to release our bacteria into the water supply we did extensive research into the effects of cadmium on humans and ecosystems using research papers and journals and we compared them to the impact that our bacteria might have, should it be released into the water supply. We also researched what impact introducing a foreign bacteria might have on endogenous species. Our approach uses up-to-date scientific literature that has been subjected to peer review and intense scrutiny. However, the scientific consensus may change when more information on this topic becomes available. It is also very difficult to predict with 100% accuracy how our bacteria would behave and react to certain environmental factors. Taking in cadmium in large quantities can lead to high toxicity levels in the bacteria and making phytochelatins can be energetically costly, so the microorganism could be rendered inefficient by selective pressure.

Answering our Question and how the answer influenced our project

Public support is of utmost importance when it comes to our project, as the topic of GMOs is highly controversial outside the scientific community. A lack of transparency on our part and incorrect understanding of our organism on the part of the public would only harm our chances of going forward with our project. From our surveys we found that the public would only support release of GMOs into the water systems if it was done in a highly controlled manner. We decided the best way to use our bacteria while also addressing the worries of the public was to release our microorganism in a system that it would not be able to escape that also has a water permeable membrane, so that the water purification process can take place. Our research has found that a hollow fibre bioreactor would be the perfect system to house our bacteria. The cells would be fixed in the fibres of the bioreactor and water is allowed to flow through, making it possible to collect the cadmium from wastewater with minimum risk of our bacteria being released from the system. In the unlikely event of an accidental release, the bacteria would have a built-in kill switch so that surviving in conditions other than those in the bioreactor would prove impossible.

We believe that by adopting this mechanism we will show the public that we are willing to take their views into consideration and that our project is safe and beneficial to the environment. From looking at and comparing the impact of the bacteria and that of cadmium on humans and on the environment, it is difficult to reach a definitive conclusion on whether releasing the bacteria would be ethical or not. However, in our view and based on our research, the advantages of going forward with our project far outweigh the disadvantages. When taking into consideration our hollow fiber bioreactor system, the risks of our project having a negative effect on human health or on the ecosystem become minimal and our approach becomes preferable to the alternative.

How our bacteria could be adapted for others to use (within and beyond iGEM).

This could be a valuable resource to other iGEM teams and companies wanting to work with GMOs in the environment. Our human practices surveys and data analysis shows that the ways in which GMOs are handled can greatly influence public opinion, which in turn can be a decisive factor in the success or failure of a project. One can only garner public support if they can reassure the public and provide them with as much information as possible about the systems in which they will use GMOs, about the existing contingency measures and about the risks and benefits the project presents. Our research could help future iGEM teams use the right approach when it comes to getting the public on board with their project. We also hope this will help the scientific community communicate with the general public more effectively, especially with regard to the controversial topic of GMOs. This is just a part of our full sustainability and ethics report. The rest can be found in the full survey statistical report.

Improving the function or characterisation of a BioBrick:

We are working on improving the characterisation of pYoda( zinT) (Part:BBa K896008)

Collaboration

We have an ongoing collaboration with the Imperial College London iGEM team, as they are also using phytochelatins in their project. We are helping with their part characterisation, as they do not have access to cadmium.