Silver

iGEM Toronto was very fortunate to partner with the Rathenau Instituut and received a generous grant of 5000€ on behalf of Synenergene. As part of the collaboration, our team has been consulting with Zoe Robaey and Dr. Todd Kuiken on how to design our project most effectively. One of Synenergene themes for 2016 was “The Fight Against Mosquito-Borne Diseases. iGEM Toronto Human Practices 2016 was interested in the correlation between artisanal and small-scale gold mining and malaria prevalence in developing countries. The Policy & Practices Team wanted to emphasize the diagnostic advantages of both our gold biosensor and malaria rapid-diagnostic testing. Our project focuses on co-opting these two technologies in hopes of an efficient product to accurately detect for gold and malaria.

Application Scenario

As per Synenergene guidelines, our team focused heavily on designing how the biosensor would serve the market and critically exploring its implementation. In the first few months of conception, our team performed functional decomposition activities and brainstormed best ways of delivering a product combining our biosensor and a malaria RDT Package.

When forming our preliminary design, we aimed at creating individual kits that would consist of the gold biosensor mounted at the top. Artisanal miners would apply their soil sample and be able to view the concentration of gold ions present in real time using the smartphone app (See Figure 1). After deciding that an individual kit would not work, our team was very keen on creating a physical 3D model as part of the implementation of our design.The team decided to call this design the “Lab on Wheels,” and it would include a fully functional lab inside of a large truck capable of driving out to areas with working artisanal miners and taking and developing/processing their samples with the biosensor paper (See Figure 2). After determining that we need to take the design at a broader level, we decided to come up with a model focusing on social infrastructure.Our implementation framework is based on an incentive model whereby both parties are motivated through self-interest to generate lasting change. The process is outlined in detail in our White Paper.

Techno-moral Scenario

Our techno-moral scenario is a creative piece consisting of Diary Entries of an artisanal miner in Kenya who discovers the gold biosensor through conversations overheard by a nearby mining company.

Interviews

Our team member Shivali Barot was able to travel to Baltimore, Maryland to meet parasitologist and the first-user of an RDT, Dr. Clive Shiff. This interview provided us with insight about whether the paper-based biosensor is really environmentally-friendly or sustainable. Her experiences are outlined here:

We also conducted interviews with esteemed professors closer to home. Dr. Ian Crandall and Dr. Kevin Kain are both assistant professors at U of T with interests in malaria epidemiology, public health, and disease technology.

iGEM Impact

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in synthetic biology has a large social benefit, in terms of education and tangible impacts, and accordingly that barriers to participation should be lowered in the interest of expanding this social benefit. There is a substantial literature on how various aspects of iGEM- problem-based learning, engineering competitions, and undergraduate research- provide academic benefits and/or signal the acquisition of skills to potential employers. There is also some literature on how participation in iGEM specifically teaches important scientific skills and higher-order thinking, generates a passion for science, and occasionally results in scientific publications. Besides reviewing this literature, this paper will demonstrate that the act of publishing scientific research based on an iGEM project indicates a larger educational benefit than participation alone, since publication is often done by finalist and gold medal-winning teams (issues of causality will also be addressed). It will also demonstrate that the number of scientific publications and businesses resulting from an iGEM project is non-trivial, and will demonstrate how businesses resulting from iGEM teams connect to the greater economy.

The paper is organized thusly: Section One is an introduction to iGEM and synthetic biology. Section Two is a review of the literature on the pedagogical benefits of different aspects of iGEM and some literature on iGEM itself. Section Three is an analysis of patterns in the publication of 82 papers based on iGEM projects. Section Four is an analysis of 20 startups affiliated with iGEM teams, either because a former iGEM participant is a co-founder or because the startup is directly based on an iGEM project. Section Five concludes.

The complete document can be found here: file.pdf