Project
“Kill switch” is a blanket term often used to describe a system that
causes controlled cell death and is used as a way to safeguard against
the effects of GMOs on wild type organisms. The lack of quantitative data
on devices of this kind has become the basis of our project this year. We
are testing three types of kill switch: a chemical kill switch using the
fluorescent proteins Killer Orange and Killer Red which damages and destroys
the cell with reactive oxygen species; an enzymatic (lysozyme) kill switch
that lyses the cell on production; a DNase kill switch that targets DNA
disruption. Through individual tests and a continuous culture we are testing
both the efficiency and the stability of each kill switch, looking at the
potential difference of plasmid or genome integration, hoping to provide
effective characterisation and insight into their suitability as effective
biocontainment methods.
Human Practises
As a team, we the Exeter iGEM Team firmly believe in the importance of equality and diversity both in and out of the work place. In order to emphasise this we have dedicated the human practices section of the project to drawing attention to these two key issues within the scientific community.
We also think that the benefits and potential synthetic biology has aren’t currently well represented in UK universities so we have been working hard to incorporate a synthetic biology module to The University of Exeter’s curriculum which will be available to students as soon as September 2017.
Finally we have dedicated much of our efforts into educating the public and scientific community, with a stronger emphasis on the younger generations, on the importance of bio containment mechanisms such as killswitches. We have been doing this through our fun synthetic biology board game BioMech, as well as by attending school and fairs across the country.
By interviewing researchers, academics and other professionals within the scientific community and then presenting their opinions in a fun, educational and interactive way we hope to have made synthetic biology a more attractive discipline to the general public.
On the wiki you will find the interviews, surveys and social experiments that we have carried out throughout the 10 weeks of our project.
