Team:Tokyo Tech/Human Practices
Human Practice
Contents
Introduction
iGEM Team Tokyo_Tech has had outstanding projects every year especially in terms of experiments and modeling. This year, in order to develop furthermore, we had hold outreach activities positively from the beginning of our project. Also we had dialogues with the public and stakeholders to apply their advice to our project. Moreover, we had built this project, considering the contribution to society. Currently, synthetic biology is unfamiliar to the public, and in most cases, they cannot comprehend it easily. However, using Snow White story that everyone knows, our project is interesting and accessible. We did human practice activities to raise public interest in synthetic biology and to inspire the public to learn it with a familiar story, Snow White. What is more, our research about TA system and QS created “ACA Dwarfs” and “TA system ~Queen's Caprice~.” Additionally, we are doing the experiments of E. coli mutants that secrete proteins extracellularly. It makes a giant step toward technological developments in economy in the future.
Overview
Through communicating with the public, it was shown that people tend to have an erroneous idea about genetic modification, and E. coli, and they have almost no idea about synthetic biology. Additionally, there is some advice that they cannot understand the contribution to society primarily. In order to solve those problems, we created a model called 3E model to find out the contribution of this project from three aspects: education, ethics, and economy. We are aiming to make our iGEM activity have an utmost contribution to society. Additionally, we summarized how the outreach activities, the lessons we gave and the dialogues with experts had made changes to our project, and what we thought with advice from them and what we did in chronological order. Moreover, Snow White in Grimm’s Fairy tales has a lot of versions published so far. Although we were not able to use experiments to represent all the different versions of the story, we were able to design a gene circuit.
3E
We take our project into consideration from three aspects: education, ethics, and economy. From these three aspects, we can approach in various ways, thereby can grasp our project multilaterally. So far, we had worked on many activities to inform the public distinctly of E. coli, genetic modification, and synthetic biology. Once we faced some issues, we had many discussions and also tried solving the problems. Secondly, we had thought about ethics as a key point in our project and made ethics code of iGEM 2016 team Tokyo_Tech. Furthermore, we coordinated activities to achieve the protein production control using TA system. Although it is difficult to use commercially at present, it is a great achievement that we created the idea and technology regarded as a steppingstone. This page shows all of our human practice activities.
Policy & Practices
In promoting our project, we had dialogues with the public and experts. Based on the opinions from them, we developed our project. This led to success in creation of a well‐rounded project with the connection between the public and experts, keeping from our narrow view.
This page explains the changes that some events had made to our project in chronological order.
In school festivals, we did poster presentation. Through the diverse dialogues with the general public about our preliminary idea of several projects, we found out that the public preferred the Snow White project.
As we figured out even though the contents of Snow White project are difficult to understand, the public still showed great interest on it because it brought a sense of familiarity to the most. And this obviously lead to the public’s deeper understanding of Snow White project than the others. Thus we determined our project as Snow White.
Then in the lessons we gave to the high school students, we were asked that why there are only three characters in the story. Accordingly, we found suitable characters and environmental factors to add into the story.
Another question from the students is that representing the story is interesting, but how our project can contribute to the society. This actually inspired us a lot for we started to focus on the consideration of the prospect of our project.
After having dialogue with expert, we obtained the comment that TA system has the potential to be linked to the development of effective technology.
However, at present there exit problems when using a TA system to control the protein production. We cannot selectively produce only desired protein, because other proteins also would be produced at the same time.
Then our dry lab used Java to reseach into the development of ACA base sequence’s number adjustable software which we call it “ACA Dwarfs” as a solution to the problem.
In this way, we integrated Human Practices to out project. However, we have done much more activities for Human Practices and show them in detail below.
Human Practices
Integrated Human
Our Project
Practices
May Festeval
At the university festival of University of Tokyo, the public (parents and friends of students at University of Tokyo, and people who hung around the festival) advised on our project in a poster session.
Among the projects, the ones with approachable themes were quite popular.
Settle on “Snow White” from prospective projects
Snow White is the story everyone knows, and people can understand the story pretty much. Moreover, it is familiar to the public and promotes a better understanding about E. coli, synthetic biology and our project.
Let’s perform a play during the presentation!
Suzukake Festeval
At the university festival of Tokyo Tech, the public (parents and friends of students at Tokyo Tech, and people who hung around the festival) advised on our project in a poster session. We got the advice that we should put on a play to make our story easier to understand.
Homecoming Day
This is an annual event held at Tokyo Tech with everyone related to Tokyo Tech and local people, where we aimed to get feedback from them by introducing our activities with a poster. However, we were not able to tell the public science and technology easily, and they had trouble understanding baseline knowledge.
- Make videos about E. coli and synthetic biology for the public.
- Make an interesting card game for study.
At the beginning, the characters were three: Snow White, the Queen and the Prince. To make our story closer to the original one, we added the Magic Mirror to the story.
Snow White story has some versions. Based on our parts, we designed two gene circuits to represent different story. versions.
Ochanomizu University Junior High School
The lesson’s goal was to obtain feedback on our project from junior high school students and to get our project valued with their own evaluation axes. One student offered the following comment.
“Don’t other characters appear in the story?”
Can we make something socially beneficial?
We discuss with ourselves and set up an opportunity to have a dialogue with experts.
The lesson’s goal was to raise student’s interest in iGEM through the explanation of the possibility of genetic modification, gene recombination techniques, and synthetic biology. The other goal of this lesson was to get feedback on our project from high school students. In the lesson, we focused on the explanation of our project at the time. One student gave the following opinion.
“Certainly, representing Snow White Story is interesting, but can you make your project work for society?”
Expert Prof. Nakasaki
During the dialogue, He said that repetition of protein production control probably takes a step to the technology which reduces the risk of the multiple-drug-resistant bacteria emergence.
We got the positive opinion that TA system probably leads to a valid technology in the future.
However, there are two problems with protein production control using TA system.
(i), You cannot produce target protein selectively; you produce other needless protein simultaneously.
(ii), Repetition of protein production control leads to sustainable production in one system. However, to take protein from E. coli, you have to destroy E. coli, which makes sustainable production impossible at present.
We continued the activities to find the clue of two critical problems. We worked on them (i) from a view of modeling, (ii) from a view of experiments, and finally found solutions for the problems.
- ”ACA Dwarfs”
The development of the software which adjusts the number of ACA (Adenine-Cytosine-Adenine) sequence in the DNA.
This makes it possible to adjust the inhibition of each protein, that is, you can produce a bigger ration of target protein when MazF works. Moreover, we designed the Java code so that many people can use it.
The experiments to make E. coli mutants that secrete protein extracellularly and “TA system ~the Queen’s Caprice~”
UV irradiation has being performed to make the mutants that secrete protein extracellularly.
Using “ACA Dwarfs” gets the higher grade target protein, which realizes NMR protein crystallography without purification. Additionally, preventing mRNA cleavage of target protein and cleaving mRNA of unnecessary protein can establish sensitive protein labeling.
Furthermore, our research leads to DDS (Drug Delivery System) and reduction of the multi-resistant-bacteria emergence. It should be developed in the future, so the details on them are shown on Future work.
So far, iGEM team Tokyo Tech has “tell the public synthetic biology” in various ways with the familiar theme. However, we have not been able to affect certain number of people. We thought that this may have happened because of our way of relaying. Therefore, we decided to ask a science communicator, who is an expert of telling science to the public.
Kanagawa prefectural Atsugi High School
Class goal To raise students’ interest and awareness of E. coli and to increase knowledge about synthetic biology and gene ligation techniques.
The lesson got the result of an advance in knowledge and enhancement of student’s interest toward genetic modification (however, we could have got better results.)
Science Communicator Mr. Ogawa
He told us that only representing the research cannot attract audience’s interest, and cannot get shrewd feedback. Also, he suggested that our story should have a clear conclusion to tell people something.
We learned how to tell science to the public from a science communicator. From his talk, we noticed that we should design the whole project considering what the public will think after explaining our project.
In addition, we decided to make our project more attractive, through clarifying our project’s goal and setting a clear conclusion.
Summary
We “went beyond the lab” and developed our project through human practice activities.
We did not just reflect the opinions on our project from the dialogue with the public and experts. Firstly, we investigated and discussed the issues on our own. Secondly, in the light of the application of our project, we did the experiments and modeling. Finally, we succeeded in the creation of “ACA dwarfs” and “the growth and death wave by toxin-antitoxin on agar medium.” What is more, we are doing the experiments to make E. coli mutants that secrete protein extracellularly. They probably lead to the further development of our project.
As above, we have succeeded in integrated Human Practice.
Suzukake Festival (May 14 & 15, 2016)
The Suzukake Festival, the school festival on the Suzukakedai campus, was held on May 14-15, 2016. We introduced iGEM and our projects to the visitors to let them know synthetic biology and got feedbacks.
Homecoming Day (May 21, 2016)
Homecoming Day is an annual event held at Tokyo Tech. We introduced iGEM and synthetic biology to alumni. We realized that it is hard to explain our research themes and goals to the public clearly. Therefore, we decided to make videos about E. coli and genetic modification.
http://catalog.takara-bio.co.jp/PDFS/50_24-27.pdf
file:///C:/Users/Mako/Documents/iGEM/MazF社会貢献性（single%20protein）.pdf
Snow White Versions
The remaking of fairy tale “Snow White” by the Brothers Grimm has enjoyed a lot of versions since it was published in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Some elements are common in any Snow White stories. However, because authors add their original elements or features to the story, it becomes unique. We chose other two versions, “Mirror Mirror” and “A Snow White Christmas” and designed their genetic circuits.
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