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 box bag like product that beekeepers apply in the sugar water just before the start of the winter.

"I am interested in combining disciplines to discuss ideas and come to new solutions. By using science and art together I aim to tell stories about what could be our future. I want to take existing conflicts or themes and envision what could be their consequences or solutions, to broaden our understanding of the present.

BeeT is a innovative approach to solving a man-made problem. Implementing a genetically engineered bacterium into the agricultural sector is something that should be done carefully. It opens up a dialogue about the use of altered organisms in daily life. Communicating both the risks and the merits of such a precise tool is the most important to me. Genetic engineering is a new technology that is met with a lot of fear, but by completely and openly showing the inner workings, it can be assessed honestly.

With BeeT specifically, the challenge is going to be to gain acceptance in the world of beekeeping. The design of the BeeT container is meant to be clear in use, and will show which hive is currently being treated with the bacteria. The marking label is still connected to the container of the bacteria, ensuring no mix up of labelling."

BeeT will, via the sugar water, end up in the brood food and transported to cells where bee larvae grow and where the mite is present. Inside the cell it will ‘sense’ and kill the mite. This will result in healthy winter worker bees who live longer than their summer counterparts, strongly increasing the chances of survival for the colony. The timing of BeeT makes sure it will not interfere with the honey. In comparison, existing technologies use for example thymol which is a pure toxin. Thymol is not only toxic to mites, but to bees as well. It has to be applied three times a year and interferes with honey, which can make it taste like mouthwash. Interestingly the ‘do not change the consumer principle’ turned out to be an important input point. Rather than requiring that beekeepers would have to change the sugar baskets that they use (since some of them are not completely dark) we decided to do light measurements and adapt the system in such a way that the system would not be killed by the light of the sugar basket. A box like product is the most ideal form since it can be applied to all sugar-water-basket systems.

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 about art and science and where those two topics overlap. Their views on our project helped a lot 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 (Baklavah) 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 application scenario. “Resource” is the magazine and news website of students and employees of Wageningen UR, and 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 for the public. 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. 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, how safety by design can be achieved and our own opinions about it. Eventually, biosafety of BeeT became a major part of our project, with over half of the team members working on some safety aspect.

Events

Throughout the year we have visited a lot of conferences with several goals: to inform different stakeholders about our project and 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

  Conference organized by the Rathenau institute for relevant stakeholders about the future of synthetic biology and 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.