Gold

Micronutrient deficiencies are a worldwide problem, however, most people do not understand the role of micronutrients in everyday life. To better educate the public, we held a Discovery Dialogue at the Atlanta Science Festival to discuss the negative and positive aspects of genetically modified organisms, such as the food we eat. We further discussed how micronutrients in genetically engineered foods help resolve micronutrient deficiencies in other countries. Our iGEM team then reached out to Mark Styczinski at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who is currently working on developing an affordable zinc biosensor. His team inspired us to focus our project on characterizing degradation tags in a known protease system. To learn more about micronutrient deficiencies around the world, our team met with Dr. Ralph Whitehead, a researcher from the CDC, and he gave our team more insight about the effect of micronutrient deficiencies in public health in lesser developed countries. To learn more about how we integrated our human practices into our project, click here!