iGEM Concordia Wiki

Integrated Human Practices: Abstract

On top of our aim to educate the public and get them involved and interested in sciences, the members of this year’s iGEM Concordia team decided to get input from members of our community at both the high school and college levels and make use of their ideas in order to enhance our project and make it appealing to the public. In order to do so, we started by interviewing Concordia University students on campus. We were able to inform them about the pros and cons of nanoparticles and their uses in our daily lives. When some showed concern for the safety of nanoparticles, our interviewer informed them about the SOP which our team has been working on this past summer. This SOP entails all our experimental protocols (including synthesis and attachment of nanoparticles) as well as a safety protocol which is made public so that any scientists working with nanoparticles could refer to. Scientists are also able to build upon our SOP in order to create their own protocols related to their research.

At the end of each interview, we asked our interviewees to imagine their own microgladiators armed with nanoparticle ‘weapons’. Most answers indicated an interest in pointy nanoparticles, which lead our synthesis team members to search a protocol which could generate such weapons. We ended up synthesizing gold nanotriangles through the use of the Aloe Vera plant extract, along with our other spherical nanoparticles synthesized using some of their suggestions as inspiration for the types of "nanoweapons" we synthesized.

In addition to the student interviews conducted on our campus, we contacted Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School in order to present in two different Biology classes. The presentations included an overview of the iGEM competition and jamboree, a description of our project as well as the science behind each phase, and finally an interactive discussion through which we were able to get their opinion and make use of their comments to further enhance our project.

Knowledge about the effects of nanoparticles on the environment is limited, which is why we wrote out an essay explaining the effects of nanoparticles on the environment based on previous research, as well as their effects on our health. Because of this limited knowledge we believe that this essay would serve as an educational article for people working with nanoparticles as well as a response to certain concerns we receive when explaining the aspects of our project.

We also developed an app and a game in order to show the importance of nanoparticle safety and the excitement of making our MicroGladiators fight to a younger generation.

Integrating Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School's Suggestions

Through presenting to two Biology classes at Pierrefonds Comprehensive High school, we were able to reach out to a young group of individuals about our project. We had the chance to motivate them about pursuing a career in a scientific field, teach them a bit about synthetic biology, and educate them about the core elements of our project. Using their feedback, we were also able to incorporate their ideas into our experimental process.

During part of each presentation, our team presenters asked the students about their knowledge on nanoparticles and their diverse uses. Mainly though, the high school students were encouraged to imagine our ‘cell battle’ and describe what our ‘microgladiators’ could have as ‘nano-weapons’. We found that most of the answers to the last question about nanoparticle design revolved around ‘pointy nano-weapons,’ which led our synthesis team to search for a protocol which could generate the corresponding shaped nanoparticles. Finally, we synthesized gold nanotriangles through the use of the aloe vera plant extract, in addition to the spherical nanoparticles we had also synthesized. This was one of the ways in which we integrated the public’s suggestions into our project.

Establishing a Dialogue with our Community

In order to gain a broader collection of perspectives on our project, we wanted to complement the high school student feedback we gathered with that of university-level students with a scientific background. To do this we conducted interviews with Concordia University students at the Loyola campus. Through this, the Concordia University community had the opportunity to hear about our Combat Cells.

Many of the interviewed science students showed interest toward our project and we received much feedback from the community. They were mainly intrigued by the ‘cell battle’ idea and how we were going to achieve this. Since we received this feedback while we were still in the process of brainstorming ways to execute our project idea, we chose to design the scientific foundation of our work directly with consideration for the public’s perspectives.

In order to integrate the public’s suggestions, we interviewed several students on our campus. We started off by providing students with a description of the iGEM competition for those who hadn’t heard about it, followed by an overview of our project. Our interview questions included:
- Do you know what nanoparticles are?
- Can you guess what products have nanoparticles in them?
- Have you ever seen a nanoparticle warning label?
- What initiatives would you take if you were working with Nanoparticles?
- If you were to design the cell battle, what kind of nanoparticles would you use (shape/element)?

As anticipated, their responses were similar to those we had obtained from the Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School Student interviews, with respect to generating ‘pointy nano-weapons.’ This further inspired us to generate gold nanotriangles with the use of aloe vera plant extract, as a way of integrating the public’s ideas into our work. Other responses to this question of nanoparticle shape were more imaginative, which demonstrated the interviewees enthusiasm toward this area of our project.

Provided below is Episode 2 of our webseries, which contains the student interviews.

Episode 2: Student Interviews

Our Response to Nanoparticle Safety Concerns

Episode 3: Nanoparticle Safety

During our student interviews and presentations, we received concerned comments about the safety of scientists working with nanoparticles in laboratories, especially due to the current limited research done on their detrimental effects. To respond to this, we have taken the initiative to conduct further research on the matter by thoroughly reading about studies on the environmental effects of nanoparticles as well as on human health. We summarized all of the collected information into a detailed educational ‘Nanoparticle essay’ and shared it with the public by posting the link to the essay on our iGEM wiki. (The essay can be found here.)

Additionally, our team members needed a reference for the proper handling and disposal of nanoparticles, the detailed synthesis and attachment of nanoparticles protocols, as well as basic procedures to minimize exposure and harm to nanoparticles, which could be used when conducting our own experimentation. This led to the devotion of our team to creating a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) which would implement each of these elements of safety into our experimental process.

While designing our SOP, we received input from one of the Chemical Safety Officers of our University’s Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Department, Daniel Pagé. Mr. Pagé reviewed our SOP and provided us with comments which we examined to improve our safety protocols. Our team also submitted our SOP to McGill University’s EHS Department who also approved of it. The final SOP was made public on our iGEM website so that anyone working with nanoparticles could access and refer to it, enabling them to practice safer handling and disposal of nanoparticles.This SOP not only provided our team with a safer laboratory practice, but we were also able to share that with other researchers, who could use this tool to improve upon their own experimental process. In addition to this, copies of our SOP were printed out and always available at our lab bench. Our team referred to this document throughout our work in the lab. This ensured that every member of the team was educated on the proper handling and disposal of nanoparticles. (Click here for our full SOP.)

Finally, we created a nanoparticle safety video that compliments our SOP and essay. This video includes lab safety information such as the importance of personal protective equipment. It also informs the audience about how nanoparticles can effect human health. The video is not only available on our webseries page but also on YouTube, where we hope it will reach a larger audience and educate the public on nanoparticles. The video can be watched below:

Nanoparticle Safety is not a Game (But we MADE it a game)

The use of synthetic biology for entertainment purposes has opened up a new platform; where the public can engage and have future contributions of ideas to the development of synthetic biology. As a result, iGEM Concordia has developed a game that incorporates the themes of synthetic biology and nanoparticle safety.

Individuals who play the game are immersed in a world dominated by the impact of nanoparticles on the environment. For example, the green waters are symbolic of the drastic effects of nanoparticles on the ecosystem, when they are not properly regulated. To demonstrate the seriousness of nanoparticle safety the game creates a world where cells are nanoparticle attached mutants and the player is jeopardized by their actions. Through this we wish to not only educate the public but also illustrate and highlight the implications of inappropriate use of nanoparticles. The game was developed in order to introduce the concept of our overall project:

Having teams design their cell with nanoparticles, and having them battle each other—like “Micro Gladiators” but at the microscopic level.

This game is another facet of how synthetic biology can be used in mainstream media to build a bridge of communication between the scientific community and the public.
You can check the game out here

Secondly, iGEM Concordia has developed an app as an educational tool to educate the public in a simple and innovative manner. Educating the public about our project draws awareness to the world of synthetic biology and its numerous applications such as entertainment purposes. The app was designed with the community in mind—easy to access and to navigate, especially since people are often on their phones. In addition, the educational tools developed for the app was designed to entertain and educate the younger generation.
You can check the app out here