Ethical Concerns and Applications

The enzymes we are manipulating have many potential uses, including applications in the oceans, streams, and rivers that make up nearly 75% of the world’s surface.

Excessive quantities of plastic float in these waterways, causing the death of numerous marine organisms and damaging the fragile ecosystem, as well as other environmental and health risks. Our specified enzyme could potentially break down this plastic and rid these ecosystems of pollution, saving the oceans from years of perpetual damage.

Despite this, with anything, there are many ethical concerns that people may have. The idea of using E Coli, the bacteria in which we put the enzymes, probably would scare people who are unaware of its minimal small health risks to the population (strain K12; benevolent). Synthetic biology is very controversial in itself, as it illuminates whether or not it is ethical to genetically modify organisms for our own benefit.

Additional concerns people may have include the potential for our genetically modified organisms to mutate and instigate problems in Inner Harbor, especially regarding aquatic/human life. Since E. coli procreates so rapidly, these organisms have a more prominent susceptibility for genetic mutations, which is why our future work would include manufacturing a kill switch for these E.coli cells, having them self-destruct at pre-determined conditions.