Team:CSU Fort Collins/Human Practices
Human Practices
How the the CSU iGEM Taught in Their Community and What They Learned
Introduction
The foremost goal of the 2019 CSU Fort Collins iGEM team was to have a project that is relevant. To ensure that our work aligned with this goal we focused on garnering input from our community. We wanted to become informed on two main subjects: how best to keep our work safe for ourselves and how to tailor our project to the appropriate niche to maximize its relevance.
Human Practices - Polling Specialists
[Reaching Out to Professionals for Experienced Insight]
Our project this year is a continuation of our project from the year before. While we had strong direction in our work we wanted to evaluate the relevancy of our work if it were to be applied to medical or commercial applications. We decided to accomplish this by polling a number of medical and academic professionals who would be likely to encounter S. aureus in their day to day work. We created, distributed, and evaluated results from the Human Practices Survey seen below and we used some of these results to guide the direction of our work.
Here is a link to the survey we distributed: Human Integration Survey
Human Practice - Community Engagement
[The 2019 CSU Biosafety Fair]
Biosafety was the other major focus for our team, and we were very lucky to have an advisor who is a member of the CSU Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC). Through our advisor, Claudia Gentry-Weeks, we were made aware of the amazing opportunity not only to attend but to host at the 2019 Biosafety and Biosecurity Fair.
The fair was designed for biosafety policy makers, professionals, and companies to get together and share their knowledge of biosafety and biosecurity with the students of CSU. Our contribution was to host a table where we discussed the iGEM as an organization, the biosafety specifically in our lab, and the overall regulations that iGEM requires of its teams. Students and faculty who came to our table participated in lab practice trivia game which was constructed using information from the CSU Biosafety Handbook. The goal was to educate our participants on the types of genetics work that we do in iGEM and what considerations we made to ensure the health of anyone involved, directly or indirectly.
Another benefit to the event was the number of medical and academic professionals in attendance. We took the opportunity to get more participation in our Human Practices Survey to further bolster our data. They also proved invaluable in discussions on the biosafety of our own labs. Our team was able to affirm our safety through the Research Integrity and Compliance Review Office by signing the “Ram Safe Pledge”. We discussed recombinant DNA research and what safety considerations needed to be observed. There were also numerous representatives from companies that were promoting products to improve biosafety in the lab.
We also had an extensive conversation with the Vice President of Research for all of CSU, Anthony Appleton. He represented the Research Safety Culture (RSC) Program at CSU as the Coordinator, and he provided a bunch of resources for our team. The RSC offers free safety supplies for labs so that they do not have to worry about cost of equipment being a deterrent to safe lab practices. Furthermore, they offer a judgement/punitive free evaluation of lab spaces and practices where they come and watch you in the lab. They then use their expertise in lab safety to suggest changes to your lab practices or set up. This service is non-enforceable because the program is designed to encourage labs to understand biosafety and take their own initiative to strive for excellence. The CSU iGEM team will be utilizing this service in the coming weeks to optimize our own safety practices. On top of all of that information we also undertook the Occupational Health Risk Assessment at Anthony’s direction. This is a review of the work that an individual is doing which suggests lab practices, facilities, and immunizations to protect them from exposure to dangerous biological agents. The assessment made us aware that because we were modifying E. coli K-12 we were exempt from the Agent Approval Request Form that most labs have to fill out. Despite the exemption we were provided with valuable tips for keeping our colonies isolated and our lab spaces sterile.
Human Practices - Integrated Input
[How the Biosafety Fair and Survey Results Affected the Project]
Not only were we able to teach our community about our work but we learned a lot as well. The results from our survey that we collected throughout the year and the feedback we received at the biosafety fair have changed our direction in some ways and inspired new routes of research in others.
First, our original plan had been to integrate some sort of phage therapy as a backup means of defense against S. aureus. While the bacteriophage could be made biocompatible via its specificity, we were convinced that working with phage would be difficult enough that we decided to abandon that route of work.
Second, the survey revealed to us three important findings that have changed the direction of our work. When asked about the primary barrier between our treatment and the people who would need it the answer was almost unanimously the cost of the product. Another major finding was that the most convenient mode of storage of our product would be a dehydrated solid which could be quickly re-suspended and administered. Our current vector species is E. coli which would check the cost efficiency box but it is difficult to dehydrate so this got us looking for another microbe. After a bunch of research we have decided to focus our efforts on getting our genetic circuit to function in Staphylococcus carnosus. This species is very cheap to produce and there is commercial president for dehydration and resuspension as it is commonly used in meat processing as a tenderizer. In addition, S. carnosus is already shown to be biocompatible so it makes an ideal candidate for our work.
Finally, our survey had less to do with our genetic circuit and more to do with the long view of our project and where we are heading. The poll showed that most of the participants believe that a wound dressing would be the best physical vector of treatment citing that as the primary point of exposure to MRSA infections in their lines of work. As the iGEM year comes to a close we begin to pass our work off to a subgroup of engineers from our team. They will use this information to design a hydrogel based wound dressing which can act as a delivery system for our living therapeutic which will hopefully feature in our project for the 2020 iGEM jamboree.
Now that we have reformulated our goals we are developing a follow up survey to send out to all of our participants who opted to be contacted for a follow up survey. As of the wiki freeze we are awaiting the input of these individuals on our proposed changes to our project.