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Revision as of 11:57, 16 October 2016

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Wageningen UR iGEM 2016

 

 

 

Our project started with a goal. We wanted to help the honeybees. How would it work? Who would use it? How could we make it something they would want to use? And not just them, but also the rest of society?

Beekeepers love their work. They love their bees and understand that Varroa is a problem they need to combat. They explained us what problems they were facing.
We would need to have something that is better than current pesticides. It needed to suit the beekeeper's schedule and methods, as beekeeping relies on highly conserved and reliable practices. Additionally, it needed to overcome their resistance to GMO's; to do that, we believed it was vital for us to ensure it could not get into honey.
We decided to focus on three key aspects: specificity, regulation and biocontainment.
There are many chemicals that can be used to kill mites, but most are also harmful to honeybees to some extent. Therefore, our approaches aimed for a toxin that would truly be a better alternative.
Our regulation focused on two things: minimizing toxin presence in the beehive and ensuring that misapplication of BeeT would not result in damage to beehives or beekeepers. Initially, we intended for our toxin to be present in the beehive at all times. If it was not harmful to bees or humans, what would it matter? It could be used as a preventative measure. However, beekeepers voiced their dislike of GMO's and especially the presence of the toxin, so we soon realized we would have to minimize the beehive's exposure to BeeT. Therefore, we included two genetic circuits in BeeT for this purpose.
From the very start of our project, we were aware of the potential dangers of using synthetic biology in a system as volatile as a beehive. Additionally, we realized that beekeepers would never use BeeT if they were not convinced that BeeT, as a living machine, could not escape their control. With this in mind, we tried to implement two complementary biocontainment systems.
Finally, we explored the ethical and societal issues together with Synenergene, RIVM and the Design Academy Eindhoven.