Overview Synthetic biology isn’t easy to explain to non-scientists. But explaining CRISPR-Cas9 is way harder. Not only because those matters are complex, but also because we still don’t know precisely the consequences of such technologies. If CRISPR-Cas 9 is undoubtedly a revolution, the seism affects other fields, interconnected with science (ethics or law as an example).
As our project use CRISPR-Cas9 we looked for its potential huge consequences. It seemed important for us to collect the opinion of both scientists and non scientists. As we worked on CRISPR-Cas9, we discovered how overwhelming it could be, and ask ourselves how we could imagine a responsible way to work with this technology.
Thus, we tried to find an answer in the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI). We believe that this concept could help iGEM teams to think about responsability in their project. Considering our project on CRISPR-Cas9, we believed the concept could give us the good questions we should ask ourselves to build a responsible project.
This lead us to investigate about CRISPR-Cas9 and its major consequences in several fields. We tried to draw the consequences and think about what would be a responsible use for scientists but also considering the societal issues. Our Human Practices followed two goals : researching among stakeholders what would be a responsible use, and popularising science for public. We met different stakeholders and we made a conference on “The societal issues on CRISPR-Cas9”. This conference in front of students permitted us to vulgarise this new technology. We also met the public as often as we could to explain what was synthetic biology, CRISPR-Cas9, and the issues of it (conference, “Festival vivant”, exhibition in the Nanterre’s university, exhibition in the” pays de Limours”, vox pop).
As there is no general responsible rules than can be applied to all project we developed a RRI test : this test works as a feed-back for each iGEM projects, in order to improve the responsability in the long term.
A feed-back on the responsability in a project on CRISPR-Cas9 can give a personal experience about the problematics the project met, and a quick overview on how we could deal with them.
See the RRI test : RRITest.pdf
Our work on CRISPR-Cas9 had two parts : on the one hand the work with stakeholders, in order to learn more on CRISPR-Cas9, and on the other hand the public engagement we made for popular science, through several activities.
Conference: the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9 French poster of the conference on the societal issues of CRISPR-Cas9
Synthetic Biology Survey In a first step, in order to build a better outreach, we wanted to know how much people knew about synthetic biology. We made a survey and spread it as much as possible.
We know survey are not always the best reflection of the reality. In a vision of righteousness and honesty we looked for the weaknesses of our results in order to have the best interpretation of it. Here are some rules we should keep in mind about this results:
· This survey has been spread on social networks. Most of the people who answered to it are French young people (79% of the people are between 20 and 30 years old).
Some questions interested us. We knew from previous experiences that synthetic biology is not well-known among public. A lot of medias talked about CRISPR-Cas9. We wanted to know if people without scientific background knew more CRISPR-Cas9 than synthetic biology. We guess we could see the influence of medias on scientific knowledge.
The survey showed us clearly that the influence of the media was not so important: only 10% of the people had heard about CRISPR-Cas9 without knowing synthetic biology.
Festival du Vivant
Exhibitions The iGEM Paris Saclay 2016 team made an exhibition in Nanterre’s University, a french university that is mostly non-scientific. We made posters, explained to students what was synthetic biology. It was a successful exhibition because the discussion we had with students were very different from discussion from scientific or general audiences !
Vox Pop Our team made a vox pop in a park in Paris, “Les jardins du Luxembourg”. We wanted to know if people ever heard of the field of synthetic biology, and if not spread the field and get their opinion on the subject.
Meeting stakeholders In order to know more about the societal issues of CRISPR-Cas9 we went to met stakeholders from different fields around science and law.
Agnès Ricroch is a professor working on plants and their regulations. She brought an interesting opinion : CRISPR-Cas is not a revolution, but a continuity. In fact, everything CRISPR is able to do already existed (like cutting the genome). CRISPR is neither easier to use : we still need to do a transgenesis in order to do it, and not everybody has the tools to do it.
On regulations Mrs Ricroch casted a light on the non-coherence of the system. A lot of different regulations coexists, for GMO’s or plants for instance. However, sometimes, those different regulations apply to the same object : how can we guess if an organism underwent genetic mutations ? Oftenly, those mutations cannot be seen on the final results. The law needs to be updated on the technologies, to be able to seize all of the evolutions.
When we talk about CRISPR-Cas9, we immediately think about ethics and abuses. Mrs Ricroch had a strong concern on putting first the great challenges facing humanity. Among these challenges, some of them can be solved by science. She told us we had to weigh the pros and the cons. But we should always remember first the issues we would be able to solve with science.
We also talked about CRISPR with the professor Marc Fellous, Emeritus Professor at Paris Diderot University and Medical Doctor
He told us CRISPR technique is a revolution because it eases genome editing which obviously raised new issues. It is, thus, necessary to established rules. Today, CRISPR has a wide range of applications: plants, animals, insects. CRISPR is interesting today in the struggle with Zika virus transmitted by mosquitoes. Some researcher looks at the question by modifying genetically female to render them sterile thereby erasing any progeny.
When it comes to the question: Does this technique should be applied to humans? Well, there is a general consensus among the scientific community, the answer is no, not if it affects the human progeny.
To sum up, CRISPR is a more precise gene editing technique which ease the process and reduce the risk of “off-target”.
Meeting with Eric Enderlin: The Legal vision
French and European Patent Attorney at Novagraaf
We chose to work on human practices directly linked with our project : because we were working with CRISPR-Cas9, we tried to know more about it and to learn how to use it in a responsible way.
We wanted this research to have a direct effect on our project. While working on the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation we had the idea to create a RRI Test, which works as a feed-back for the projects. The principles of Responsible Research and Innovation guided our research, and the RRI test helped us to reshape it to build a more responsible project.
We thus integrated all our human practices on CRISPR-Cas9 by the bias of responsibility : the RRI worked as a tool to integrate our human practices in our project.
We filled our test to see how we responded to the principles we wanted to follow. This test is divided in four parts : Reflexivity, Anticipation, Inclusiveness/Deliberation, Responsiveness.
We believe iGEM could be a great laboratory for this principles. Following this idea we gave the test to several team. They all filled it and we tried to see how the four axis of RRI (Reflexivity, Anticipation, Inclusiveness, Responsiveness are integrated by the teams.
I/ Reflexivity When we chose our project we had different options. We chose to take a fundamental project, riskier but more original.
Stakeholders were essential to help us build our project. They helped us to focus on many points and to put the project in perspective. We thus met many scientists, but also jurists and public.
Was our project needed ? We thought about the different applications of the project. It was not an easy task because the project is a fundamental one. We were guided by a publication of Olivier Espeli “From structure to function of bacterial chromosomes : evolutionary perspectives and ideas for new experiments”, which said a tool like ours would be useful for scientists (FEBS Letters, 2015). We find that our tool would be useful for biologists because of its simplicity, but also in health. This tool could indeed help to diagnose genetic diseases.
The impacts of our project were difficult to define, because it was a project fundamental biology : we didn’t know how it could be used. But the impacts of a responsible project can’t be only transferred to the user and his use in a environnemental or health context ; science itself must be responsible.
With this reflexion came the main question the RRI test asked us : how RRI could apply to fundamental research, such as our project on CRISPR-Cas9 ? The societal goal doesn’t seem to exist. However, building a responsible research is in itself a societal goal : having a more responsible science is undoubtedly a benefit for the society. The stakeholders of a fundamental project are the ones whose voices are interesting and necessary on science. In other words, the stakeholders are less identified. On our focus on CRISPR-Cas9 we felt necessary to gather stakeholders and tried to draw with them the future of a responsible use on this technology.
II/ Anticipation The more we knew about CRISPR-Cas9, the more we realised we didn’t know much on this technology and its impacts. The difficult anticipation in the scientific field transferred our questions on the human practice, and we try to learn from stakeholders what the burning issues can be on CRISPR-Cas9, and tried to get people know more about it.
III/ Inclusiveness/Deliberation As our project was in the field of synthetic biology, we had a strong concern about inclusiveness. We met a lot of stakeholders and public. In our case of fundamental research we defined the stakeholders as scientists using CRISPR-Cas9 and counselors in industrial property.
POPULAR SCIENCE : A KEY CONCERN As we believe popular science is a key concern in synthetic biology and especially for CRISPR-Cas9, we lead several activities in this field.
During a vox pop we saw that people were mostly unaware of synthetic biology itself. We thus tried to meet public, to discuss with us of synthetic biology, CRISPR and our project. (link of the vox pop ?)
We met students during an exposition in the Nanterre University, but also during the Festival Vivant, opened to everyone and an exposition at the Pays de Limours.
What did we learn of this experiments ? Most of the people we met trust scientist to be responsible in their use, and doesn’t feel legitimate to bring a critic on a subject they don’t master.
CONFERENCE : THE SOCIETAL ISSUES OF CRISPR-CAS9 Because we had a strong concern both on vulgarisation and meeting stakeholders, we hold a conference in our university, in front of students, with two researchers, Jean Denis Faure, a researcher and teacher using CRISPR-Cas9 on plants, and Pierre Walrafen a scientific with a cellular biochemistry and patent engineer.
We tried with our guests to think about the societal issues of CRISPR-Cas9, for the ethics, the law and the economy. The ethical problems CRISPR-Cas9 is bringing are huge, and for most of them, unknown. The ethical problems comes with what is done with the technology : therapeutical applications ex vivo or for genetical diseases, or applications on embryos and germ cells. The ethical problems comes along with the question of transhumanism. The issues are rising because of the simplicity of CRISPR-Cas9, authorizing a wider scientific audience to edit the genome.
About the legal framework, our speakers made a comparison between the European legal framework, the process based evaluation, and the product based evaluation, and how the patentability was in Europe restrained by a principle of public order.
iGEM MEET-UPS We attend to two iGEM meet-ups, an European one, and an other, gathering the Parisian teams. We were part of the organisation of the Parisian meet-up.
This meet-ups helps us in two ways. First it was a great opportunity to have a feed-back from our peers. Then, we met there other teams working with CRISPR-Cas9, and lead collaborations with them.
IV/ Responsiveness What did we learn ?
Leading a project on fundamental biology involves to work a lot with stakeholders. In a RRI vision, a fundamental project is an opportunity to think about the responsability of science, in our case CRISPR-Cas9.
The we saw that the potentiality of CRISPR-Cas9 was huge. This leads to two things:
It’s very difficult to define precisely what could be the impacts, thus a harder work must be furnished on the subject;
Vulgarisation for the public is a key issue. CRISPR-Cas9 is easy to use, even by students and has big consequences. We should define the purposes with more rigor and strengthen the safety part.
Using CRISPR-Cas9 requires to know about the gene before we can mutate its functions. This requires to work on genes we already know about or to have a strong research on the gene.
In the ethical field we should always balance the advantages and the disadvantage. Even if it seems obvious, it is fundamental to do this and to present the balance to the public opinion.
