Human Practices:Demonstrate how your team has identified, investigated, and addressed one or more of these issues in the context of your project. Your activity could center around education, public engagement, public policy issues, public perception, or other activities.
Sustainability in synthetic biology has many connotations depending on the stakeholder. To us, it is the responsible development of this technology that is both safe and environmentally sustainable so as to benefit society. Industry has been the earliest adopters of this technology, and like any new technology, synthetic biology has faced obstacles in its application. Our project is in the global ceiling tile manufacturing industry. As we have identified through our research and communications with global leader Armstrong World Industries and the second largest US manufacturer USG, this industry uses a high proportion of renewable and recycled materials in its production; however, this has resulted in problems with butyric acid, leading to tiles with bad odors. Biocides are presently used to manage this problem. These manufactures seek alternative, innovative solutions to the use of harmful biocides as they balance environmental responsibility and sustainability to meet the growing demands of a green building market. Our project is built on a solution that uses genetically modified yeast to address the source of butyric acid–starch–, by removing the excess starch. Safe, responsible, and environmentally sustainable development of this solution is paramount. So is open, transparent public dialog to bring to bear the realm of the benefits that synthetic biology technology may offer. From project design, to development, to implementation of our synthetic biology technology in the ceiling tile manufacturing industry, we need to be engaged with the different stakeholders; industry, the public, and regulatory agencies that will assess the safety and risk of the technology. For this, we have have had meetings in person with Armstrong’s vice presidents, senior managers, and technical experts, where we talked about our solution. We have also held numerous public events, welcoming the public’s views and holding discussions with them. We have taken our 2015 iGEM poster to every one of these public events and used it to start conversations about synthetic biology, inform the public about our project, and get their feedback. From surveys distributed at public outreach events and and overall feedback at these events, we conclude that the public is not well informed about synthetic biology and thus, their perceptions on risk and safety are limited, making this is an important area in need of much work to engage the public in discussions about synthetic biology.For more, please visit these pages: Industry Communications, Public Outreach, Project.
