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Talking to researchers that are in the ageing field

William Bains
CEO of Signum Biosciences
Gregory Stock
Piers Millet
Alexandar Stolzing
Janet Thornton
Gustavo Barja

General public opinion

What are the views of the younger generation?
What are the views of the middle aged population?
What are the views of the elderly population

How do these views differ from each other? Who is our target audience? Whats our motivation?

Synthetic Biology survey + General public

Introduction

Synthetic biology and the human body are two aspects that are hugely controversial when put in the same sentence. So, we wanted to start our project off by finding out what the general public think about synthetic biology to find out how they would feel about using synthetic biology to tackle healthy ageing in humans by releasing a short survey. The survey also gathered information on the gender, age, and their level of knowledge in Synthetic biology. We felt that it was important to gather data that accurately represented the variety of knowledge in the general community and to see if these factors affect the outcome of the survey. Not only were we able to get data from the UK, but we also got response from the general public in Spain, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Ireland, USA, Sweden, Mexico and Portugal, an international opinion on the issues raised in the survey.

We also wanted to find out what the Chinese community thought about our project and synthetic biology, in order to maximise our impact on the general public and perceptions of synthetic biology and genetically modified organisms. Therefore, Yuqiao was able to translate the same survey into Mandarin and distributed the survey through our Wechat account. We were able to get 120 responses from this survey, which adds up to 286 participants from our survey, 94.17% are in China (including Hong Kong, Taiwan Macao, South China Sea Islands and the Fishing Island) and 5.83% are in elsewhere. The participants were answering the survey in Chinese which is then translated to English by our team member Yuqiao.

Results

1. Public perception of bacteria

One of the first questions that was in the survey asked the general public to choose what image they associate with bacteria. One image showed an image of bacteria to be green and sick looking (associate with bad bacteria) (option 2) and the other image was of an electron microscope image of a bacteria (option 1). Due to copyright issues, we can’t post the images onto our wiki. 89.8% of the population associate that image with bacteria. However, 7.2% chose option 2 to be the image that they associate with bacteria. Which still indicates that the general public still think that bacteria is bad, which in reality is not the case, as bacteria can be good and bad for you. Most people who chose option 2 were from the UK.

The Wechat survey showed that 74.17% of people think option 1 describes bacteria better, 20% of people think option 2 is better. The Wechat survey showed a higher percentage of people still associate bacteria to be bad.

2. Knowledge of Synthetic Biology

In response to a question asking the public how much do they know about synthetic biology. 19.9% said they know nothing and 57.2% said they know a little. We also asked what the general public think synthetic biology is defined as, some of the responses can be seen below, where most of the respondents have a general, accurate idea of synthetic biology whilst others either skipped the question or answered “I don’t know”. The Wechat survey showed that 59.17% know nothing about synthetic biology at all.

3. Genetically modified organisms

Even though 80.7% of the survey responders are accepting of synthetic biology, 8.4% of the population either said that they don’t agree with genetically modifying organisms or that synthetic biologists are playing with god. We also asked if they thought that the benefits of genetically modifying organisms outweigh the risks. 81.3% said yes whilst 13.9% said no. 66.3% of the respondents think that genetically modified organisms are safe. The Wechat survey showed that 30.83% are accepting of synthetic biology whilst a shocking 30.83% do not agree and 15% think you are playing with god.

4. Genetically modified organisms and human ageing

When asked if the respondents wanted to live longer, fewer people answered yes then compared to when they were asked if they want to live healthier longer. This can be seen on the pie charts below, where more people would rather live healthier for longer than just live longer. This shows that our project is relevant to the needs of the general public. 67.5% of the respondents would be more accepting of synthetic biology if it made them live longer. The Wechat survey showed that 84.17% of the Chinese population are want to live a longer lifespan but a larger population (95.83%) want to live a longer healthier life. Also, 70% of people are more acceptable of synthetic biology if it made them live longer.

5. Synthetic biology and education

75.3% of the general public think that they have not been educated about synthetic biology whilst 81.67% of the Chinese population on Wechat also agree. And a large proportion of the population would like children to learn synthetic biology as a part of their curriculum. 83.1% of respondents also agreed that primary or secondary school should be educated about synthetic biology as a part of the curriculum.

Based on the results, it is apparent that respondents felt like there hasn’t been sufficient education related to Synthetic Biology. Considering a vast majority of respondents consider GM organisms safe (81%) and beneficial (81%), we have decided to take on outreach program's for school-age children to expand their knowledge and consciousness of Synthetic Biology. The results of the survey has inspired us to think about what we can do for each age group of children/students (from primary, secondary and sixth form students) to get synthetic biology widely known.

A project that is shaped by the general public

We initially wanted to find out if the general public would actually want a solution to the ageing issue of the population. So to do this we conducted an international survey (above) to reach out to many people as we could in order to get a good snapshot/ representation of the world populations needs. An image summarising the findings can be seen below

Resources for the younger generation

In response to the survey, we wanted to make synthetic biology and iGEM more accessible to the younger generation, and the rest of the public. So we decided that we wanted to make some resources for young children about our project, synthetic biology and ideas around synthetic biology. We have this document translated in English, German, French, Farsi, Spanish and Mandarin.

pdf file

Our iGEM blog

We also wanted the general public to know about our project and iGEM so we decided to make a blog highlighting our general experiences as we go along this iGEM journey! We are also working on posting some tips for future GEM teams, based on what we are learning as we go through the process.

The Blog link: http://ucligem2016.wix.com/ucligem2016

Our App

As mobile phones are becoming increasing part of our lives, we thought that developing an app may be a great way to get more people more aware of synthetic biology. We have decided to create a game that works by getting users to create certain biobricks, where the gene of interest will only complete the biobrick if the plasmid backbone is cut with the correct restriction enzymes. We want to make it as user friendly as possible and we are hoping to integrate our project and iGEM into the app as well.

Press release

We were able make more people aware of our project by getting our project advertised through the UCL website (Biochemical engineering News section). We are also working on getting the project advertised on the UCL newsletter (myUCL).

Workshop with the younger generation

We were able to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, conputer scientists and phycolgists through a workshop. We told them what synthetic biology is, our project, asked them what their perception of the elderly is and ran some fun activities. We also gave the students a chance to have some lab experience.

We asked the children to draw what they think of when I said AGEING

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We then asked the children to draw what they envision themselves looking like when they are 65 years old (the age when you are considered as elderly)

Also follow our vlog where we upload fun videos of the team members and vlog throughout our iGEM journey

Elderly opinion

Tea with the elderly on Saturday 16th July. Chichi was able to attend the tea session where she was able to ask some of the elderly what they thought about our idea and synthetic biology.

To start our story, we want to build the foundation of our ideas by talking to the experts and reknown biologists that are in the field, to get an experts opinion on our ideas.

Skype meeting with Aubrey de Grey

On July 14th, we held a Skype meeting with Dr. Aubrey de Grey, who’s a prominant researcher on gerontology, ageing and regenerative medicine and is known for his work all over the world. He has lead many TED talks about healthy ageing as well as being a member of the SENS research foundation. We discussed a variety of topics, including oxidative stress as a route to tackle ageing, using probiotic bacteria as a means of delivering therapeutic products, and the feasibility of creating a synthetic human genome. The full skype interview can be seen below.

We started off by explaining that we are hoping to build some solutions to healthy ageing in a humans and that we are hoping to do this by focusing on the effect that oxidative stress has on the cells. While Aubrey thought it was an interesting idea, he gave us some useful insights as to where to focus on our research. We received a lot of help into how we can do some characterisation experiments on our lycopene idea, which Aubrey said was a good idea, if we can prove (through experimental data) that Lycopene can survive in the gut aswell as being successfully secreted from the bacteria. Specifically, we will now look into adsorption of lycopene by the cells to make it suitable for the gut. He also mentioned that we need to think about whether the bacteria can survive in the gut envriorment and that we should consider modifying the bacteria so that they would survive under low pH of the digestive tract. Aubrey was able to provide us with alot of points to consider, thing that we may have not thought about. He mentioned that oxidative stress does not only differ significantly within different parts of the body but also in different parts of cells and that a targeted delivery of the desired compound is vital. A targeted delivery would also allow to broaden our biobrick to Crohn’s disease, for example.

Besides our project, we asked Aubrey what his thought were regarding creating a synthetic genome, and subsequently creating ‘’synthetic humans”, that could even be automated by robots. While he considered it interesting, he was quite spectical – primarly because synthetising the genome itself is note sufficient for it to work. A lot of effort would have to be put to add methylatons, and histone modifications, and that is particularly labourious and challenging. Aubrey said that ”instead of creating the genome from scratch, it would be more efficient to cut out certain faulty genes”.

The interview with Aubrey allowed us to explore further ways that we can charactorise Lycopene and prove that the gut microbiota will benift from lycopene. We are hoping to design further charactorisation tests that we are going to use. We got a huge insight to current ageing research and also provided us with tips for our project. He also suggested that senescence and ageing would not be a good route to go down as the genes have already been established (we possible cant do anything thats already be done within our project). In response to his perspective on senescence and synthetic biology, we are hoping to speak to Maximina who is currently doing research on Salamander and senescence. Through this meeting we can hopefully gain another perspective about our senescence idea.

Filipe Cabreiro from UCL institute of ageing

On July the 18th, we met with Dr Filipe Gomes Cabreiro, a researcher from the UCL institute of ageing. His research focuses on the role of metabolism on ageing and interactions between host-microbiota-drugs interactions, so he really gave an interesting perspective to our project as we are hoping to create a probiotic oxidative stress mop (Lycopene antioxidant). In our meeting we discussed, among others, feasibility of the bacterial probiotics, and challenges relating to those, including stability of both the microbe and the our product, the difference in gut conditions between humans and model organisms, and efficiency of our process.

During the meeting, we discussed how lycopene may interact with the microbiome, its stability, degradation patern and how it could be absorbed. Filipe suggested that we needed to make sure lycopene does not influence any other microbes in the gut – that means adsorption and degradation pathways need to be checked experimentally. However, Filipe said that antioxidants as an entreprenerial idea, can become a hot topic within healthy ageing research: ‘’From the comercial point of view, though, there is a huge market for anti-oxidant based products and they would very likely sell well”. However, a challenge could be licensing a GM product, and so majority of research focuses on using bacteria occuring naturally in the gut.

Finally, Filipe also raised the issue of stability and transferability of our lycopene product from model organisms to humans is of utmost importance. As most of the cutting edge research to do with ageing is all being proved in mice and not humans, it may be difficult to prove that the same effect will occur in humans as mice and humans have different microbiota. This all goes down to the same point raised by Aubrey de Grey - that we need to think about how to create a compelling proof of concept for our casettes and to get enough evidence from the experiments that show that the Lycopene secretion will not be effected by the gut and that Lycopene will not effect the gut microbiota.

Filipe also provided us with some useful thoughts about doing somethng with the mTOR and insulin signalling longevity pathways which may be a more efficient way to tackle healthy ageing. Filipe and Aubrey de Grey also mentioned the same points of the microbial probiotic having potential in treating Crohn’s disease. The meeting resulted in Filipe providing us with alot of ideas that we could look into more detail and that we are hoping to research in more depth.

 Making a website that has all the tools/add ons that previous iGEM teams have made 

Talk to Dementia patients- Weinberg-Rauhes Haus

Since the age of 14 I have been regularly exposed to the beautiful and perilous aspects of growing old and taking care of the elderly. I started out by occasionally helping out in a dementia home in Hamburg with a family friend who works with therapy dogs for the elderly. Then right after graduating high school I worked in Alzheimer’s research at Roche for 9 months and through that I got to meet a lot of people very passionate about this, whilst also getting a good insight into the pharma side of things.

It has been two years since my work at Roche and I’ve spent my other summers either working in an office or now on iGEM. Although our project is about ageing, I haven’t been thrown into the deep end of dementia research and care for a while. Precisely until I was back at the dementia home in Hamburg this past week, this time with the purpose of getting the opinions of the elderly about our project and their life in general. I got to speak to a few people individually and then also two groups of people, everyone with varying forms of dementia: from very light Alzheimer’s, which you wouldn't be able to tell, to the late stages, which are almost incomprehensible. Overall these experiences were enlightening, inspiring and motivating to do more research and help but simultaneously the potential realities of the future are distressing.

Over the next few weeks we will be publishing the stories of the people I got to speak to and the impressions and experiences I gained from the group sessions.

Maximina interview Thursday 21st July

Willing to dig deeper into senescence and ageing, we met Dr. Max Yun, a Senior Research Associate in the UCL’s Division of Biosciences. Max’s research focuses on regenerative biology; aiming at understanding how regenerative capacity decreases with age, as well as looking into the impact senescent cells have in salamanders and humans. As someone in the field of ageing research, we really wanted to see what her opinion on our project ideas are and to get some feedback.

In the meeting, we discussed the potential of the SOD pathway as a method of removing oxidative stress in the lungs. Max really liked the application of using an inhaler which would direct the virus containing the SOD gene to the lungs. Which would be a targeted gene therapy that would work on removing oxidative stress specifically in the lungs. She also suggested that we could use RNAi in cells containing no SOD or low concentration of it, to see how the cell reacts in the lab. As a result, we are now going to research the SOD pathway, as well as links between its over expression and ageing.

Max also said that ‘’A product releasing lycopene would require a tight control of dose”, highlighting the isssue of a probiotic that removes oxidative stress in the gut. Moreover, we found out that oxidative species are required for regenerative responses, and communication between cells so mopping these out might be damaging for the cells. Different tissues and cells may respond differently to lycopene and she also pointed out that oxidative stress can also be a good thing for the cells as well as bad. As a result, we will now into enzymes related to lycopene and reactive oxidative species (ROS), to look at the interactions between them. Max also pointed out a company called Catapult, which is involved in gene therapy clinical trials, which could help us with our idea of gene therapy. Such therapy could involve haematopoetic cells, which would be less risky, as it would only target one system only. As a result, we are going to contact the company for more information, as well as to obtain a more detailed opinion of the feasibility of our SOD gene therapy idea.

As regards to the relationship between senescence and ageing, Max underlined the complexity of the topic: while a lot of research is being carried out at the moment, tackling senescence is incredibly ambitious, also because there is no single senescence marker discovered yet. However, we were suggested to look into the inhibition of the mTOR pathway, which also decreases levels of senescent cells. Another challenge, that we have already encountered, is the difficulty in measuring concentrations of senescent cells. While it can be done in vitro using a fluorescence assay, it is more challenging in vivo – a nanoparticle system doing that has recently been developed by Max herself. Max also mentioned that using p16 as a marker for senescent cells is not 100% accurate and reliable, as p16 can also be found in other cells. Not only that, she also mentioned that there is no surface marker that has been found only in senescent cells that can be used as a biomarker and researchers in the field are currently still trying to find one. Therefore, making a biosensor for senescent cells is difficult and not very accurate. Max joked that if we could find a surface marker then we could become Nobel prize winners (outlining the difficulty in this field)!

We also mentioned the possibility of developing a gene therapy that would allow the cells to make synthetic telomeres that would prevent the telomeres from getting short. Critical shortening of telomeres in cells is a cause of ageing and cell death. Max said that ‘’the idea of engineering telomeres is of high risk due to cancer, as well as issues related to genome stability” . While we are still considering this idea, we might now give it a second thought as we would need to consider how single change in the human genome would affect the whole system (whether this would cause more problems than it solved). This meeting with Max provided us with a lot to consider and think about when it comes to the impact that the ideas would have on the human genome as well as other complications – not only do the causes of ageing have a negative impact on the cells but they can also have small positive impacts. For example Max raised the issue of reactive oxidative species being necessary for regenerative cells as well as damaging to DNA and causing ageing completions. After hearing all our ideas, we asked Max what she thought of our project overall. She mentioned that if there is a strong link between lung damage as we age and depletion in SOD enzymes, then there is a good and interesting case for gene therapy solutions.

We also asked Max what made her want to work within the Ageing research, she said that she is interested in what makes an organism and how and how the organism became and that Its not just about making an organism live longer, its about making them live healthier. Her interesting perspective will hopefully provide us with more of the scientific foundation and the feasibility of our ideas.

Week long outreach workshops with year 12 students at the sutton trust summer school Monday 8th -12th July

Outreach activity workshop with year 12 students at the sutton trust summer school Thursday 28th July

UCL iGEM does Outreach:

Last Thursday Michelle, Amandeep & Abbie presented to a group of year 12 students about synthetic biology, iGEM and ageing (and even got invited back to present later this month)! We encouraged discussion throughout the lecture and it was great to teach them a little bit too.

We then proceeded to have two debates: one focussing on ageing, another on synthetic biology.

The arguments were eloquent, well thought through and focussed on aspects such as the economic, ethical and even emotional impact of this research. The debate was particularly poignant at times and the students all had their own opinions which we encouraged the discussion of. We were not only impressed, but inspired by their enthusiasm and the feedback we received. Especially now some of the students want to get involved with iGEM and even study biochemical engineering- a degree they previously didn't know existed.

Outreach activity workshop with year 8 students at the sutton trust summer school Friday 29th July

Friday was another day of presenting for us 3- this time to year 8 students - we gave them an insight into ageing in London and again encouraged participation. After our talk we again set up a debate in which the students represented one of the following stakeholders:

'Business person wanting to build a gym', 'scientist wanting to build an ageing research institution', 'doctor wanting to build a walk-in clinic' and 'the council wanting to build a community centre'.

Again, great arguments were constructed which considered the negatives of the other parties as well as the strengths of their own. They considered the different types of job prospects, ethics and short vs long term investments. We were particularly pleased with the vote outcome in which the students favoured a research institution to be built.

UCL iGEM x Sutton Trust summer school - biosciences stream

This summer school is based at UCL and formed part of our outreach activities since it is aimed at students from widening participation backgrounds. Abbie worked closely with the students and lead a group of 5, year 12 students.

This involved demonstrating various lab activities from basic pipetting to performing restriction digests and running gel electrophoresis. We also performed an activity which looked at the bacteria on skin before and after washing hands, the effectiveness of chemicals on killing bacteria and even gram stained these, looking under them at a microscope. A lot of the experiments were new to the students so it was essential to explain the techniques and assist throughout.

It was also an opportunity to give advice about university and share our own personal experiences.

Amandeep and Abbie also gave a lecture on iGEM, synthetic biology and ageing. Afterwards we ran a workshop and debate with regards to synthetic biology and ageing research as before to the 30 students on the stream. We really enjoy this activity due to the consideration of ethics, economics and personal experiences.

Some highlights have been collated in the video.

UCL iGEM x David Kurten (London Assembly)

We wanted to understand where our project fits in with public policy and are trying to gain a well-rounded view. To do this we met with David Kurten, a UKIP member of the London Assembly. After explaining our project we went onto discuss what priorities the elderly population has, the public perception of GM and the effect of Brexit on science research. Here is what we discovered:

Science is ahead of politicians knowledge, similarly, legislation is slower than the rate of research. There is the potential therefore for research to accelerate without real consideration of the ethics.   OUR SOLUTION: thoroughly discuss and explore the ethics of our project.
Gene therapy Introducing something unnatural- genetically modifying human DNA. Again, sciences races ahead of legislation. Requires the Government of the day to be behind it for it to become law.  OUR SOLUTION: Talk with an MP about the process of legislation with regards to GM, synthetic biology and science research.
Consent: this is important with regards to who will be affected.  OUR SOLUTION: Talk to lots of people to see if they would like to take a therapy/get in contact with those who already have.
Vested interests: political and green and companies, research funding bodies. Knowledge and transparency of information important.  OUR SOLUTION: Present our research with no bias and be transparent with results.
What can we do to change public opinion?  Existing propaganda has influenced the opinions of the public. There is a need of transparency. e.g. of labelling food.
Semantics of GM vs synthetic biology ‘advancing progressing, doing science’ vs biotechnology, again has positive connotations.
UKIP policy: look into what the science says. Allow research to happen on an objective basis as well as to ensure that large data sets are used.
Loss of faith in scientists due to medias portrayal - faking data news story. Suggested that raw data directly to public to let them make own decisions. (we are aware this is ridiculous). There is a need however for communicating the information without a bias. Media- sensationalism sells. Deeper level of understanding is needed. Currently a dumbing down of culture rather than this uplifting of culture.
On Brexit. 20 billion to EU, 10 billion back, net fee of around 10 billion. A lot of EU funding is British money. Not going to effect the UK for funding (just missing out). Collaboration will continue- not dependent on EU dependent upon innovators and scientists regardless of EU. People that are involved. Long term- cutting out a layer of bureucracy- more efficient and less
Medical without ethics, looks great. Changed DNA structure - lots of discussion is needed. Is this natural or not. Personal view- cautious, case by case basis. Not a fan of changing DNA, it’s evolved over time to how it is now. Short term benefits- what about the long term implications- they are unknown. Should we be doing this? ‘perfect super human race’ personally- should not be playing around of DNA. Taking ethics, morality and faith out of the question, we should do it. But adding these I think we shouldn’t.
Ageing: unintended consequences of action. population increase/policy change- working longer, pension system would collapse. Increasing retirement age- public wouldn’t like it. political suicide. demographics of voters- older people vote more.

Synthetic biology showcase: Friday 16th July

Amandeep, Michelle and Abbie presented at the Annual Synthetic Biology Showcase at UCL. This was a unique opportunity to share our project with leading synthetic biology researchers, shape our newer ideas as well as to discuss the ethics of our project.

Human Practices Hub.

Note

You must fill out this page in order to be considered for all awards for Human Practices:

Human Practices silver medal criterion
Human Practices gold medal criterion
Best Integrated Human Practices award
Best Education and Public Engagement award

Some Human Practices topic areas

Philosophy
Public Engagement / Dialogue
Education
Product Design
Scale-Up and Deployment Issues
Environmental Impact
Ethics
Safety
Security
Public Policy
Law and Regulation
Risk Assessment

What should we write about on this page?

On this page, you should write about the Human Practices topics you considered in your project, and document any special activities you did (such as visiting experts, talking to lawmakers, or doing public engagement).

Inspiration

Read what other teams have done:

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