Team:Exeter/HP/Gold
The Gold HP section is covered in more detail in the Integrated human practices section which can be found here.
In essence we looked to integrating our human practices in two distinct ways - Integrated: Kill Switch and Integrated: Equality and Diversity.
We wanted to integrate Human Practices concepts into our lab work, by interviewing researchers from academia and industry, to see what their ideal kill switch would be, in order for us to embed this into the design of our project. We initially spoke to Dr Tom Ellis of Imperial College London who informed us that kill switches are both correctly classified in Biosafety and they have the capability of being an effective bio-containment measure. He believed that multiple kill switches in one system would have applications in academia because it could reduce the error rates to “less than one in a billion”. Consequently, our idea for an operon of kill switches, with KillerRed and KillerOrange in the same system, was well grounded. Furthermore, this influenced our initial idea for a CRISPR based kill switch as we initially hoped to test the effect of targeting multiple essential genes in the host genome. However, when speaking with Markus Geshater of Synthase Ltd. he argued that multiple kill switches in one system, or even one kill switch in a system, would reduce the efficiency of the protein or molecule they were trying to produce. Consequently, we moved our idea from testing multiple kill switches, to testing whether kill switches themselves can be effective measure in industrial or academic use. We further spoke to Professor Richard Titball who said: “Realistically it is going to have to be a genetically determined biocontainment system”, however he was skeptical of whether kill switches could be made reliable. He did say however that the public should be involved in discussions about assessments for the safety of genetically modified organisms, which prompted us to engage the public with synthetic biology to include them in the debate. Professor Rob Beardmore discussed with us how there would be a functional loss of the kill switch, due to a high selection pressure, which would seriously affect kill switch longevity. Consequently, we set up experiments using the ministat to test the effectiveness of kill switches. More information on their page can be found here.
We also wanted to find a novel way of integrating our Human Practice work into itself, as we believe that this allows us to form well grounded research into areas such as equality and diversity. We initially spoke to students to understand their perspectives on the issue of gender inequality in science, highlighted in a video. At the end of the video, we spoke to our supervisor, Dr Chloe Milner, who said that whilst she had never experienced sexism directly, all of her bosses were men and only one of her lecturers had been a woman, and she didn’t know if this was a sign of times past or present but it would be interesting to see why. Because of this, we decided to find out why this was the state of affairs at the university.
This led us to a meeting with Dr Andrew Griffiths, chair of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity group for Biosciences at the university. He talked about issues such as a lack of confidence in women, ways of making the workplace more flexible and inclusive for all and the issue with maternity and paternity support and the potential for a parental leave to be introduced.
We took these concepts to Dr Eduarda Santos, the former chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity committee for Bioscience, for a different perspective. We followed this pattern throughout the series of six interviews, adapting and evolving the argument as we went, commenting on previous interviews and the thoughts and experiences shared with us.
This series of interviews concluded with a panel discussion on equality and diversity which integrated our public engagement and education work into the integrated equality and diversity work, for we opened up a two-way discussion with students and the public via a live discussion in front of a crowd that was also live streamed on Youtube, via XTV Online, and live broadcasted on campus radio, Xpression FM. We succeeded in highlighting the issues of equality and diversity in science, using the university as a case study, but we also succeeded in educating the public and providing a platform for further debate and discussion to be held. More information of this integrated work can be found in our 'Integrated: Equality and Diversity' page here.