Together with the RIVM, we made a movie depicting the safety issues linked to our project. In the Netherlands, the RIVM (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu) is a governmental institute that is concerned with public health and a safe living environment. Part of their work is encouraging discussions about the development of synthetic biology from a policymaker’s perspective, which includes a collaboration with all Dutch iGEM teams since 2014.

For this collaboration, the teams were asked to depict their thoughts and concepts about safe by design in a video, podcast or other representation. We decided to make a movie that shows how safe by design is implemented in our project.

Since the video is in Dutch, we will give you an impression of what we deal with and what we resolve in the video: In contrast to many other synthetic biology applications, BeeT is intended to be used outside the lab: In beehives. Even commercial Beehives are in close contact with nature. To get a better idea of the viability of our idea, and what it is like to request permission to use an engineered microorganism outside of the lab. We looked at the questions that are asked in such a request. After that, we discuss some of these questions that peaked our interest in the movie. Some interesting questions we had not thought about, such as “How can a genetically modified microorganism be recognized among natural relatives?”. Some questions we did not expect, for example, here are a number of questions about how the genetic modification was established. We would expect these questions when talking about the ethics of genetically modified microorganisms, and not necessarily when determining the risks of using it.

Another interesting aspect of the application of synthetic biology is responsibility: If our engineered bacterium would be commercialized, who would be responsible for any adverse effects? In our opinion, scientists are responsible for thoroughly and objectively investigating and reporting possible risks. Companies in turn should monitor whether the technology is sufficiently researched. Companies should also make sure that user manuals are correct and clear to understand, even to people with little experience with comparable technology. Users of the product, the beekeepers in our case, are responsible for using the product in the intended way only and following the user manual provided with the product. Our movie ends with some open questions regarding safe by design, both in general and within our project. Examples are “what should be done to actually realize the insights that are gained by safe by design?” and “should there be more focus on the positive aspects of using a genetically modified microorganism when judging a permission request?”. We don’t know the answer to these questions, but think they are important nevertheless.

Concluding our collaboration with the RIVM, some members of our team, as well as the other dutch iGEM teams attended a meeting organized by the RIVM and the Rathenau institute, with the theme: “Veilig verder met synthetische biologie”, or “Making safe progress in synthetic biology”. During this meeting, researchers, policymakers and policy advisers brainstormed, discussed, and presented their ideas about how synthetic biology should be handled in the future. We gave a short presentation about the topic of our project and how we integrated “safe by design” through toxin specificity, controlled expression of the toxin and confinement of our product to the beehive. During a short information market, we:

• Got to talk more in depth with people who were interested.
• Presented the movie we made for the RIVM.
• Made the "Resource from the future" in collaboration with Synenergene.

We learned a lot from the talks about further handling safety in synthetic biology both from a political and a societal point of view. An interesting point that comes to mind was made by a speaker about how feelings of the public concerning synthetic biology can be a useful source of questions on the ethical aspects of our work. She also mentioned how art can be used to connect people to synthetic biology and how in return art can give the emotional concerns a voice, as scientists might oppress these. In our project, we tried to achieve this through collaborating with the Design Academy Eindhoven. Besides, it was nice to get to know more about how the other dutch iGEM teams handled the RIVM assignment. We thank the RIVM and the Rathenau institute for inviting us, it was an inspiring day!

In short, we learned a lot from collaborating both with the RIVM and the Rathenau institute/Synenergene. When starting iGEM, safety and containment of our engineered bacterium were just “Things that need to be considered in order to perform well in the iGEM competition”. The RIVM and Synenergene assignments helped us to think more in depth about different safety aspects and our own opinions about it. Biosafety of BeeT was always a major part of our project, with over half of the team members working on some safety aspect, but these meetings really showed us a different side of it.