Team:UCL/Humans/Story

The Human Practice Story

UCL iGEM has addressed the subject of Human Practices with three central questions. The answers to which not only gave us insight, but guided our research to best benefit the world.

What does the Industry need?

Journey to ETAD

Basel, Switzerland

In a bid to further understand the industry requirements for an Azo Dye remediation project three of our team ventured to the head office of The Ecological and Toxicological Association of Dyes and Organic Pigments Manufacturers (ETAD) in Basel, Switzerland. We met with their Chief Director Walter Hoffman along with Research and Development Directors from Bezema and Huntsman Dyeing Companies; Georg Roentgen and Dr Stefan Ehrenberg respectively.

We came out from the meeting with a much deeper understanding of the factory dyeing processes, current remediation strategies and the requirements of the entire industry. Below summarises what we learned and how it changed the direction of our project.

Composition of Dye Effluent: Effluent not only contains Azo dyes that can we toxic to E-Coli upon remediation but Copper and Chromium salts in addition.

From this knowledge we set out plans to test the toxicity of copper and chromium salts in different concentrations. If the salts caused problems in our E-Coli we planned to add a promoter for overexpression of the Copper resistant CusA and CusB proteins as a first step to solving this problem. We also planned to compare the survivability of our GMO in the two waste water environments and assess the further modifications to our device that would be required to improve its effectiveness.

Sulphonated Azo Dyes: In an effort to use less water in the dyeing process, companies are leaning towards to the use of sulphonated dyes which cannot be easily broken down in normal factory methods

From this we decided to include another Biobrick for enzyme Lignin Peroxidase which has been shown to aid in the breakdown of sulphonated dyes.

Trip to Thames Water

*Bez Content*

How can we understand the impact of our project on a sociological scale?

Citizen Synbio

Having already visited stakeholders from the dyeing industry about the logistical aspects of our solution we decided to extend a hand to the rest of the stakeholders in the industry, as well as the general public to gather information about how they felt various topics so that we could alter our project accordingly and set a precedent for future teams to do so:

Are there better solutions to the problem than ours?

Is it safe to use synthetic biology in the bioremediation of dyes?

Whose responsibility is the problem?

We gathered over 85 attendees from various specific industries including the general public:

Company Representation

(a)Ethical Fashion Forum, Jack Wills, Aravore London (b)Central St Martins, Highams Park (c)Forum for the Future, University of Greenwich Law Dept, Global Water Forum, Environmental Industry Commission (d)UCL, University of Sussex, GamCare (e)University College London, Imperial College London (f)Guardian Newspaper, The Write Network

Selection of facebook pictures to be inserted her

The answers to the aforementioned questions we acquired during the discussion lead our project to evolve to better fit society and industry stakeholder needs:

Question

Are there better solutions to the problem than ours?

Is it safe to use synthetic biology in the bioremediation of dyes?

Whose responsibility is the problem?

General Responses to consider

Remove use of Azo Dyes altogether and use alternative dyeing methodology

You can never know the future, you must move slowly in implementing such a plan. If there is an escape of the bacteria, you must stop them transferring DNA to other organisms or outcompeting beyond the current technology

Everybody's; scientists, industry, lobbyists, the general public.

Project Alterations in response

Collaboration with Bioartist Natsai Audrey to explore the possibility of Bacterial synthesised dyes

Exploring implementation timelines at a factory level for future business plans. Creating a Xenobiological module within the project.

Create #UncolourMeCurious short film to increase knowledge of the problem and hence increase likelihood of all parties knowing enough to take responsibility.

What the video of the discussion here

*Insert Video Here*

Sociological Imaginings

Kevins introduction

How do we engage the general public to understand the problem and the solution?

The #UncolourMeCurious Campaign

The #UncolourMeCurious Campaign was created so that awareness of the problem could spread hence breaking down responsibility of the problem to anybody and everybody as suggested by our Citizen Synbio panel discussion. It comprised of three fantastic art collaborations, a conceptual short film and social media campaign.

This culminated in the #UncolourMeCurious Exhibition with works from Central St Martins, Natsai Audrey, Linden Gledhill and The Slade. On the opening night the spread of attendees ranged though the Ethical Fashion Forum, Jack Wills, Guardian Newspaper and many more. A more detailed attendee description can be found here

insert entire gallery of exhibit here

The exhibit contained work from our numerous BioArt collaborations:

Central St Martins

We approached the Central St Martins textiles department with our ideas of synthetic biology and science and they asked ‘When does technology like this become accessible?’ This question yielded a set of beautiful visualisation of the way our bacteria could be used to create art if controlled by light.

These pieces by second year Textiles Design BA students Cameo Bondy and Barbara Czepiel exhibit the textiles that could be created if our bacteria contained optogenetic biobricks that switched their dye breakdown capacities on and off via light cues.

Natsai Audrey

*Pamela Content*

Linden Gledhill

*Edo Content*

The Slade

For the exhibition The Slade School of Art provided us with Pigment Cases outlining the history of dyes. They illustrated how dyeing technology has moved through the ages and allowed the public to witness how far we have come.

*Pictures of the pigment library with interactive links to joy's timetable

#UncolourMeCurious Conceptual Short Film

We knew that the exhibit would engage the public but we asked ourselves, what about those who do not live close enough to visit and learn about this issue? In lieu of we created the conceptual art film #UncolourMeCurious which has been entered into the Vienna Biofiction Film Festival competition.

*Insert Film here*

Social Media

The film was part of our social media campaign to try and raise awareness across the globe about the problem of Azo Dye toxicity. We took to twitter and facebook with the hashtag #UncolourMeCurious in order to communicate with the world of fashion and textiles that something had to be done.

During the campaign we reached an average of 673 people on twitter per day and often more:

*Insert Gallery of Tweets*

We also reach over *insert super awesome number* via the short film as posted on youtube in over *insert super awesome number* countries of the world.

*Insert picture of super awesome analytics from youtube*