Design

We contacted the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) to help us in designing an applicable format for BeeT. After mutual visits, a design student from the DAE – Thieu Custers - proposed a product that incorporated the daily practices of beekeepers and BeeT: A juicebox-like product that beekeepers apply to the sugar water just before the start of the winter.

Collaboration

DAE

We initiated contact with students from the Design Academy Eindhoven to enhance the interdisciplinarity of our project. We met up several times and discussed science, society and where those overlap. Their views on our project and synbio in general helped us in designing our project and adapting it to real life demands. For a concrete collaboration, we asked one of the students – Thieu – to design our end product, BeeT, in a way it could be presented to future users. Our collaboration with the DAE did not only lead to us having a positively received final product design, but also led to our project influencing the design students’ projects. One of the students gave us the opportunity to have a “real life bee experience”. The aim of this project was to study group dynamics, stress, and teamwork. The task was to prepare a dish (Baklava) like bees would do it. Leif Czakai made a movie out of this.

Synenergene

Synenergene is a four year program to promote the dialogue about the future of synthetic biology between relevant stakeholders, contributing to responsible research and innovation. Synenergene partners, including the Rathenau institute, are in close collaboration with several iGEM teams from all over the world.

Our collaboration with Synenergene consisted of two assessments: an application scenario and a techno-moral vignette. The assessments were intended to help us evaluate the viability as well as the societal impact of our envisioned product. We chose to write a “Resource from the future” for our techno-moral vignette. “Resource” is the magazine and news website of students and employees of Wageningen UR. By writing a Resource from the year 2030, when BeeT will be available on the market, we aimed to bring up ethical issues around synthetic biology in a way that is fun and accessible to the public. Some of these issues are highlighted in the interviews with the general public we included in the magazine. At the same time, the magazine served to spread the word in Wageningen about our iGEM project. Additionally, we wrote an application scenario. This scenario explores how European legislation could affect future BeeT usage.

RIVM

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. They investigate the impact of synthetic biology on these aspects of our society, and aim to bring existing knowledge on the topic together. 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.

In short, we learned a lot from collaborating both with the RIVM and the Rathenau institute/Synenergene. The RIVM and Synenergene assignments helped us to think more in depth about different safety aspects, how safety by design can be achieved and our own opinions about it. We gained a new perspective on how biocontainment is perceived.

Events

Throughout the year we have visited a lot of conferences with several goals: to inform different stakeholders about our project, to collect input on the BeeT system through different stages of the project, to network with companies and explore sponsor possibilities, and to have fun and learn some things ourselves.

• March: multi-stakeholder dialogue

  "The role of synthetic biology in energy transition"

  Discussion about the current Dutch energy supply and the potential role of synthetic biology. We created “the green human” futuristic scenario where humans would evolve together with plants to be able to rely on photosynthesis for energy. In our opinion it exposes a very important aspect of both energy transition and synthetic biology: that the public should be involved, to be more conscious about energy use and more engaged with technological advances in the field of synthetic biology.

• April: NBV and BioSB

  Annual conferences of the Nederlandse Biotechnologie Vereniging (NBV) or Dutch Biotechnology Association and the Bioinformatics and systems biology research school. Our goal: collect input, talk to potential sponsors and have fun.

• April: DAE Meetings

  As mentioned in the collaboration section, we designed our project with the help of students from the Design Academy Eindhoven. We met with them twice: The first time, we visited them and took part in a design workshop. The second meeting was a lab day for them to see what our everyday life in the lab looks like.

• May: National Meetup

  We organized the meet-up of all interested Dutch iGEM teams. Four teams took part: Groningen, Leiden, Eindhoven, and us.

• June: Synenergene forum

  The Rathenau institute organised a conference, for relevant stakeholders regarding the future of synthetic biology, to explore the right conditions for responsible research and innovation.

• September: RIVM forum

  Concluding our Collaboration with the RIVM, we 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 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.

• October: Lunch lecture at Wageningen University

  The last month before the wiki-freeze we organized a lunch lecture at the university for researchers, beekeepers, students and other interested people to present our project and collect input for the last time.