Team:Alma/Integrated Human Practices
Integrated Human Practices
The pursuit of cutting edge science and technology such as iGEM and synthetic biology are still rooted in the philosophical wisdom from antiquity. "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit" is a quote from philosopher Will Durant, in his effort to synthesize several of Aristotle’s. It is also a great prism for which to view an iGEM project: we strive for excellence and a successful project, and so must display excellence in every aspect of the project. As Aristotle might have said, the project requires high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; in modern terms, this is what we call an integration of human practices into our project. We sought to accomplish this in a variety of ways, from the very beginning of our project and throughout the year. Our journey is explained below, with the specific lessons we learned highlighted in maroon. You can also jump to particular sections, such as our discussion with Dr. Amanda Harwood (Environmental Toxicology), Dr. Jennifer Vranish (Integrated Health Physiology), Dr. Nicholas Dixon (Philosophy), Dr. Landau (Anthropology), and Mr. Jeremy Hendges (Talent and Economic Development, Michigan Gov’t).
College-Wide Survey
Early in the year, we had developed a number of different project ideas. These came about from our club meetings – some of them were actually adapted from writing assignments and proposals for classes such as Advanced Biochemistry. In an effort to develop an excellent and intentional project, we sent out a survey in April to our campus community to get their feedback on different project ideas.
The key survey question was to ask for which of the following 4 project ideas were most appealing:
Project Idea #1: Water Filtration System
This would involve developing a biological system capable of removing contaminants from water. The contaminants we target could include:
- Lead: to ease the burden on families in Flint
- Nitrogenous waste from fertilizers: to help clean the Pine River and the Saginaw Bay
- E. coli: to help clean the Pine River and the Saginaw Bay
Project Idea #2: Anti-cancer drug production
This would involve engineering a bacteria to produce the drug Taxol (Paclitaxel). This drug is effectively used to treat breast, ovarian, colon, and lung cancers, and is naturally derived from the bark of mature Pacific Yew trees. These trees produce very little of the drug, and removing its bark kills it, explaining why this drug has been present on the FDA Drug Shortages List several times. In 2012, it was estimated that 50% of women with ovarian cancer were affected by the drug shortage.
Project Idea #3: Wine with Antioxidants ('Healthy Wine’)
This project would involve engineering the yeast used in wine making to produce antioxidants. Antioxidants are typically ingested through fruits and "superfoods" and have been linked to longevity through involvement in eliminating free radicals in the body. Free radicals have the potential to damage cells in the body, specifically when your body does not have enough antioxidants.
Project Idea #4: Treatment for Atherosclerosis
This project would involve creating a bacteria capable of digesting the compound trimethylamine -- a compound created after eating red meat and eggs. This compound has been shown to induce atherosclerosis, a type of cardiovascular disease that increases the risk of other cardiovascular diseases that are the cause of 1 in 4 deaths in the United States. Ideally, the bacteria would be engineered to eventually live harmoniously among the other bacteria in the gut and act to reduce atherosclerosis in humans.
Over 70 people (students and faculty) participated, giving helpful feedback and expressing overall excitement for the iGEM team. Some of the feedback also identified drawbacks and negatives aspects of some of the projects that we had not considered. Due to the similarity of the anti-cancer project to that pursued multiple times by the Duke iGEM team, we decided to focus only on projects #1 or #4 going forward. Overall, people we surveyed seemed most excited by the idea of tackling a local pollution problem.
Discussion with Dr. Harwood
Due to the high interest in tackling one or more local pollution problems, we sought to meet with Dr. Amanda Harwood, a professor of environmental toxicology at Alma College. We shared our overall project idea – cleaning up the nitrogenous waste in the Pine River - and in return got a lot of information regarding the true nature of pollution around the area, who the stakeholders would be (Legacy Pollution Group: CAG, Pine River Advisory Group), and what additional questions we would need to answer for a successful and excellent project. In particular, we also learned the following:
- It is currently unclear what form of nitrogenous waste would be present in the water (NO3, NH4, etc)
- The Pine River (and surrounding soil) downstream of Alma is also heavily polluted with DDT, currently treated and removed through a laborious and expensive procedure. This is considered legacy pollution.
- The problem is mostly with drain ditches from farms, which runoff into the river. This can even be visualized on Google Earth view. Farms have ample, cheap supply of manure that is liberally applied to the fields.
- This can be classified as a ‘wicked’ problem – many challenging aspects, no easy solution for all of them.
While the information would be helpful if pursuing Project #1 – however, learning the true nature, scope, and challenge of this project made us want to consider the other project further as well.
Discussion with Dr. Vranish
To compare with the detailed expert feedback we had gotten on the Pine River project (#1), we met with Dr. Jennifer Vranish, professor of Integrated Health and Physiology at Alma College, to discuss the Atherosclerosis project (#4). It very quickly became apparent from this meeting that our survey probably underestimated the potential of this project – our discussion with Dr. Vranish and others revealed that a more careful and clear explanation of this project generated much more excitement. This highlighted for us the importance in clear communication about the nature of the project – making sure the prerequisite science is not an obstacle for potential support. Among other things, we learned:
- We should be careful when referring to the pill as a GMO because a lot of people are scared of GMOs nowadays, so we should refer to it as "biochemically enhanced probiotics" instead.
- Dr. Vranish told us that if TMA is produced naturally by the body, that we should consider the possible negative effects of interrupting its formation. She suggested that we develop microbes to combat the effects resulting from TMA, instead of inhibiting its production. We later learnt that TMA has no beneficial effects in the body, but was an important point to consider when telling others about the project.
- We learned that this problem is not only global, but can have a strong local focus: impact this project would have on this area due to the high amount of heart disease and obesity in this area. Although Dr. Vranish didn't have specific data on atherosclerosis in Gratiot County, she mentioned that it is one of the worst counties in the state in terms of the level of cardiovascular disease.
- Our solution may have some negative effects as well as some people may use it as an excuse to eat a bunch of foods that lead to TMA (like red meat) which could in turn increase the risk of atherosclerosis which is the problem we are trying to solve. From this we realized that we must pair our efforts in the lab with efforts to promote healthy living.
- We also discussed how proper education to our community about the benefits of genetically modified organisms and attempting to remove the negative stigma associated with them would be a good starting point. This discussion also evolved into discussing how we could present this idea to the pharmaceutical companies that currently treat atherosclerosis with statins.
- We decided that, ideally, if our genetically modified bacteria could be used as a way to decrease the dosage of statins a person had to take or the frequency at which a person had to take them then hopefully this could reduce the adverse effects statins cause and this would ultimately be a win-win in our eyes — encouraging more people to benefit from statins without suffering the side effects. This way, further development of our project could deliver a powerful technology without antagonizing a powerful industry.
- Promoting a short acting solution, such as a pill that needed to be taken half hour before a high red meat meal that to a lot of people who already face the problem of atherosclerosis would be just another health pill to take. It would be possibly seen as another burden or chore. A long acting treatment would likely be more attractive because it wouldn't add on another task of the patient's day, but maybe a dose that would need to be administered in a routine check-up would be more plausible for people to follow. A long acting method such as changing the whole microbiome of the small intestine where TMA is metabolized and produced naturally would seem more ethically/medically risky to deal with, but it is also a better solution looking for a means to an end that is preventing heart disease. Thus, we had clear parameters to consider – ideally our solution would work or persist not too long as to pose a safety risk, but not too short as to be ineffective.
- It’s important to know how accessible our work could be to the general population and the at-risk population.
The lessons we learned from our discussions with both Dr. Harwood and Dr. Vranish, among others, ultimately lead us to settle on our focus of the Atherosclerosis project (#4). Thus, Plaque Attack was borne! While we were now armed with some expert insights, there was still a lot of other lessons to be had in order to proceed in this project with intelligent – and safe, careful — execution.
Discussion with Dr. Dixon
To better understand how to think about the risks involved in our project, and the safety and ethics involved, we met with Dr. Nicholas Dixon, a professor of philosophy and medical ethics at Alma College. We discussed the ethics of different ways to test new drugs on the market. This discussion ranged from standard procedures to a consideration of the limits of informed consent – a particularly interesting example was thinking about why/if animal testing is appropriate given their inability to give informed consent. We also discussed a few theories in ethics, such as the fact that what is ethical can change from person to person and how this makes it so that ethics is a grey area from time to time; in particular, we discussed the differences between Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. From this discussion, we understood how our project, if successfully implemented, would need to be tested for safety on animals and that in the course of testing, implementing, and promoting our project, that we should always treat patients and people as ends into themselves.
Our wide-ranging discussion with Dr. Dixon also yielded insights into how to best communicate the benefits of synthetic biology: that it is a technology that is an evolution, not revolution, of traditional medicine and biotechnology. It has been clear that GMO's and synthetic biology, to those who are unfamiliar with the science has had a previously negative stigma clouded over it. This can even has raise the question if modifying organisms to perform a specific role is playing God, or too disruptive to the natural order of things. Dr. Dixon raised a good point in saying that all of medicine to fight disease throughout history is in itself also defying the role of nature. The approach that people take in synthetic biology is just a new route that is just as radical as any other medicinal practice was used. Of course when presenting this information to the public our message is not to make those who do not buy into synthetic biology feel incompetent, but rather introduce the idea that we have the ability to fix world problems more efficiently than ever before and that with enough careful consideration and planning, these things can be safe and beneficial to society as a whole.
Taken together, it was clear from the discussion with Dr. Dixon (along with the advice from Dr. Vranish) that we need to be clear, positive, but careful and accurate in how the project is portrayed – we could draw attention to the proper context for synthetic biology, but to deliberately mislead people about the nature of the project would be unethical, similar to proceeding on a medical intervention with getting informed consent.
Advice from Dr. Landau
A religious studies student at Alma, Eryn Corinth, met with Dr. Kristin Landau in the Anthropology department at Alma College to broadly discuss human practices and outreach. Eryn later met and relayed these lessons to the other members of the team. These included practical matters such as the need for IRB approval with any serious surveys, the idea that a survey should have some open ended questions, and that we should try to survey (ideally) 20% of a given population – that If this is not obtainable, then some effort should be taken to ensure that a representative cross-section of the population is surveyed.
Finally, Dr. Landau gave important insight that for something to count as OUTreach, there has to be a component that reaches back out to the community. This it was clear that in any efforts we made to contact or survey others (bringing information in for our use), we had to provide an outflow of information and connections – perhaps by setting up a mailing list, an online community, or other type of engagement.
Discussion with Mr. Jeremy Hendges
In May, we met with Mr. Jeremy Hendges at the Office for Talent and Economic Development, a branch of the Michigan State gov’t. This meeting was to get further insight into how we can best reach out to people all across the state; raising awareness of synthetic biology in general and iGEM in particular.
In our discussion with Mr. Hendges, one of the main points we touched upon in regards to collaboration with the TED office is to grow the synthetic biology community at the K-12 level to establish an appreciation of synbio for the future generations to come. We compared this endeavor to what the robotics community was able to accomplish in the past decade in growing their community in to the K-12 education through the FIRST Robotics Competition. Both iGEM and FIRST Robotics may have similar aspects in how they operate so we thought it would make sense to push for developing a synthetic biology community at the high school level across Michigan through a simplified version of the iGEM competition for high schoolers. Mr. Hendges thought that may be a good avenue to start and seemed kosher to the idea of spreading word of synbio and its beneficial effects so that kids may develop specific talents and skills at an earlier level so that they have better career oriented development, which is what their department is trying to maximize.
It is cliche to say, but the youth really is our future. If we can expose them to these things and show them that GMOs are not something to be afraid of, but rather something to embrace, then I think there is no limit to where this field can go. This final lesson helped to direct our engagement efforts towards high school students, we did pursued both by bringing those students into the lab as well as setting about exporting our science to their classrooms by working with their teachers.