Team:UCL/HP/Gold
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HUMAN PRACTICES: GOLD
OVERVIEW
Our project has evolved from a single idea to a multidimensional project that extends the healthy lifespan through many routes. The influence of human practices has formed an integral part of our project and has greatly changed not only the design of our therapies, but the team’s perception and understanding of the problem. We truly believe that every person we have interacted with has resulted in either changing the way the team thinks about our project, inspired the formation of a new BioBrick or improve the design of our ideas. See our integrated practices page for a detailed overview of how human practices has shaped our whole project.
mNARK lycopene probiotic
We wanted to create novel synthetic biology therapies that can be effectively integrated into society. In order to do so, we wanted to talk to the experts , to fully understand the problem and how our synthetic biology solutions can be optimised. Initially, we spoke to our main project inspiration, Aubrey de Grey (the full skype video can be seen here ). Aubrey mentioned that our lycopene idea was promising if the data we obtained showed that Lycopene can survive in the gut and if our genetically modified bacteria can survive under low pH of the digestive tract. As a result of talking to Aubrey, we designed further characterisation tests for our lycopene BioBrick, where we have stressed our cells through different inducers of oxidative stress.
Consequently, we decided to send our mNARK – Lycopene containing bacteria to Dundee iGEM to test how well our bacteria survive in their stomach simulating device, which can be seen here . We were able to successfully see that our probiotic idea is feasible as it is able to pass through the acidic environment of the stomach to the gut. Click on our lycopene page to find out more about the results of our collaboration. After talking to more researchers such as Filipe , we gained more confidence that there is significant proof of concept that is required for our therapies to be successfully integrated into society.
The experts: Formed an integral part of our biobrick designs
Outreach: More than just educating the younger generation
Public engagement and education
