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Our project - GlasYo
When brainstorming ideas for our project, we identified vitamin A deficiency as a major problem in the world, which is how GlasYo was born. We decided to make a β-carotene enriched yogurt using synthetic bacteria. The idea is that people can make their own yogurt, a staple food in many countries where vitamin A deficiency is prevalent, from one starter pack of these β-carotene producing bacteria. This would provide a sustainable way of generating vitamin A. In addition, we wanted to make an accessible piece of hardware that would allow people to make the yogurt. Both parts of our project targeted limited resource areas, so we decided to contact experts in these fields.
Consulting Experts - Andrew Prentice
Early on in our project, we had a skype call with Andrew Prentice, a Professor of International Nutrition, who is currently working as part of the MRC International Nutrition Group in The Gambia. He has been studying the epigenetic impact of maternal nutrition on the [http://ing.mrc.ac.uk/home/people/andrew-prentice/ offspring's genome]. In this skype call we explained our hopes and ideas of the project, and he gave us realistic opinions on it and some potential issues we should look into, for example how GMOs would be perceived by the public and their legislation and what yogurt producers thought of our hardware idea. Our chat with Professor Prentice was extremely useful and allowed us to gain more insight into how our project would work in the real world.
Further Consulting
After our Skype call with Professor Prentice, we looked into contacting iGEM teams in a country where vitamin A deficiency is a problem. We contacted three iGEM teams in India to try and develop a better understanding of our target population. Despite our best efforts, we could not manage to set up a suitable time to hold a proper conversation and had to switch tactics.
We decided we should try and get feedback on our accessible yogurt maker. We made contact with Dr Srinivasa Chakrawarthy Ravuri, a renewable energy engineer based in India. He confirmed that India are “prolific users of solar cookers” and “the weather is eminently suitable for our work”.
After this we contacted numerous yogurt producers, but weren’t able to engage with them. Instead, we came across an association working on solar technology, called GoSol. As we had designed our yogurt maker to be powered with solar energy, we decided to contact GoSol.
GoSol
Gosol is an organisation based in Finland which is a leader in solar technology. They have had experience in low-to-middle-income countries, such as Kenya, and so we decided to get in touch. They shared their expertise and advice on our project, and suggested possible design alterations that would improve multifunctionality and how we could distribute our product internationally.
