Integrated Human Practices

Yoghurt production is a major industry in Bulgaria, since Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus is endemic for our territory. In addition, we have one of the highest consumption rate per capita for yoghurt in the whole world. Therefore, it was clear from the beginning that our project was going to raise some serious issues regarding utilization of GMO’s for the production of Bulgaria’s most beloved food. Knowing that, we approached the matter practically and consulted the major producers trying to cover all aspects of the revenue sources in this type of industry. We consecutively met with the major producer of Bio-products (http://harmonica.bg/ ), the major holder of patented strains of L. bulgaricus http://lbbulgaricum.bg/ ) and the major biotech industry in the region of South-East Europe (http://www.biovet.com/ ). The results of those discussions were unanimous. While the scientific aspect of the project provoked some interest, the risk of being condemned by the society as THE Company that dared to ruin our beautiful Bulgarian bacillus was regarded as an unsurpassable impediment. Even the potential of the CRISPR-Cas9 as a non-recombinant technique could not convince the business that they should go forward supporting such project. However, the companies were extremely interested to use the potential of a team of young students willing to work in the field of synthetic biology and were ready to support any other type of useful for them project that we could have proposed. Thanks to those discussions we made serious re-thinking in the aim of the project and we decided that the actual problem was that in yoghurt industry the producing strain is part of the final food product and is consumed directly. However, many of the biotechnology production processes end with separation of the cultural medium (with the final product) from the producing strain. Therefore, we decided to re-design the project as a genetic construct that could allow for the conversion of any microorganism into a resistant-towards-desiccation-and-temperature-stress type. The last company actually loved it and they are willing to establish a long-term relationship with the team, maybe even use us for subcontracting of some their research efforts. We believe that this kind of experience is very useful, since such problems in food industry are standard. Our approach of free discussions with the interested parties and not being fixed towards the initial aim of the project allowed us to adapt to the actual conditions and to realize the full potential of our idea while not confronting with society. If we aim for the ever wider application of synthetic biology in everyday life, we should adopt exactly such flexible position that both promotes the benefits of science and still does not invoke irrational fears. We conducted multiple presentations with diverse audiences and different themes (familiarizing the audience with iGEM competition, synthetic biology, GMO, economic issues aimed at the food industry) and we took any opinion, for us each was important.