FDR HB - Collaborations

Collaborations

The Science National Honor Society at FDR

Last season we had many activities going on at once, those include Girls Can!, the Journal of FDR Science, and Habla Roosevelt. Girls Can! was a STEAM project created by one of our past iGEM members that worked towards bridging the gender gap in the sciences through art. Our team would give a couple of lessons a week to fourth-grade girls. Some of the topics we taught them included chemical reactions, oceanography, and electricity. The Journal of FDR Science was a magazine our team put together that aimed to teach others about iGEM and our previous project, we wrote many articles and their topics ranging from the health effects of mercury to exploring heavy metal mines in Peru. Finally, we collaborated with a service club at FDR named Habla Roosevelt that teaches the staff’s children English. We gave the kids 90-minute science lessons every Saturday that covered different scientific fields through the use of fun experiments like the egg drop and elephant toothpaste. This season we wanted to pursue other projects we had in mind, but at the same time, we didn’t want to abandon the projects we had worked so hard on the past year. This was when we decided to pass on these three projects to the Science National Honor Society (SNHS) at FDR in order to make them sustainable. SNHS has been doing a great job so far at moving these projects forward. They have been able to move the Journal of FDR Science onto Facebook in order for more people to access it. They are expanding the knowledge the kids at Habla Roosevelt already have. They have made the Girls Can! lessons much more frequent and much more creative up to the point that the science lab is flooded with third and fourth-grade girls each lesson. We hope they continue to build upon these projects.

The Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia

Last year we were able to establish a collaboration with the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH). They were our mentors when we were learning the basics of synthetic biology and starting to develop our project. Since then, we have been able to implement a lab on site (at FDR). However, Dr. Daniel from the UPCH has remained as one of our synthetic biology experts this year. He has given us feedback and has helped us move forward with our project.

Collaboration with Alianza Cacao Peru

On June 21, a Friday, we visited the offices of “Alianza Cacao Perú”, a major cocoa alliance, and we met with Mr José Iturrios, director of the Alliance.

We first told him why we were there and he briefly explained to us their industrial process for cocoa processing and dealing with cadmium. We had a presentation prepared for him, fairly similar to the one we showed to TASA when we visited their HQ, so we told him we could talk more in-depth once we had the basics cleared. Miski and Diego presented. Even while we presented, we discussed some of the details of our theoretical detection and removal process, and he seemed interested in our approach.

After the presentation, he showed us a presentation of his own that outlined the dangers of cadmium contamination to the industry, a more detailed description of the bean processing, and some rather vague or hard to implement solutions. Most of them were field solutions that would be hard to implement due to the sheer number of farmers involved. We explained our solution would be easier to implement on an industrial scale due to it being an industrial process. However, we thought that a limitation of this application could be that the bacteria could possible change the taste of the cocoa, which is important as it is known for that special factor.

We learned that the main problem that Peru’s cocoa industry is facing right now is the new EU regulations on cadmium per kilogram of cocoa (0.6 mg) and its derivative products. Cocoa powder is the product that will be affected the most, as only 5% of Peruvian cocoa powder meets the 0.6 mg of cadmium/kilogram of powder limit that the EU imposed at the start of 2019. The other products (eg. cocoa liquor, cocoa paste, chocolate) are mostly safe as at least fifty percent of what is nowadays produced meets the EU’s limits. Additionally, due to the high levels of Cd in Peruvian cocoa powder, it currently sells for $500 less than African powder.

We agreed he would send us the presentation so we could use the data for our project, and with a possible invitation to a chocolate expo for us to gain more contacts and outreach to the industry. It was a success, by all means, considering it was the first time we met with this company.

We were later invited by Mr. Iturrios to attend an exhibition about Peruvian cocoa, its derivatives, and its future called “Salón del Cacao”. We attended the presentation of a metastudy about cadmium in cocoa beans, its implications, and possible solutions. The person that presented this was Rachel Atkinson, Ph.D., an associate scientist at Biodiversity International. She proposed several field and industrial solutions to the problem, finally stating a compound solution with many factors was the best bet. Afterwards, we talked to her to get more details about her study and discuss the possibility of applying synthetic biology to the problem. She didn’t seem fully convinced, probably because of the problem of maintaining the organic quality of the product and, most importantly, maintaining the flavor, which might be affected by the use of bacteria. She helped us in realizing that the best application of our project in the cocoa industry would be in detection as opposed to extraction.

Additionally, a planned activity in the event was a panel of experts who would explain the reality of cadmium in cocoa through shorter presentations. Teammates Miski Nopo and Ana Lucia Campos were chosen as panelists. They gave a short overview of our project and explained how it could be used to address the problem that was being discussed. Many of the attendees were interested in the topic and sought us out after the presentation. With this, we were assured that we were on the right track in trying to minimize this problem as many were interested in our possible solution.

Collaboration with ECOBAF

In our search for the possible application of our project in the cocoa industry, we contacted Pascal Ascencio, the CEO of ECOBAF. This company uses synthetic biology to make agriculture more sustainable by enriching the soil. He is an expert in microbiology and was therefore able to give us feedback on what would be best to detect and remove cadmium from cocoa. We explored the possibility of applying our project to the soil or the plant itself before the cocoa is harvested as using bacteria on the cocoa itself could potentially change the flavor.

Collaboration with US_AFRL_CarrollHS iGEM Team

This season we collaborated with the US_AFRL_CarrollHS high school iGEM team. They asked us for feedback on their wiki guide, which is both a series of YouTube videos and a PDF with various details and instructions for first time wiki editors. We evaluated all components of their guide and gave them feedback. On the other hand, they helped us out with our FDR after school program for middle school students and with our STEM club at HB by giving us lesson ideas such as extracting DNA from fruit.

Collaboration with UANL iGEM Team

Our team is planning to continue this project until we are able to implement our solution in real life and one important aspect that comes with this goal is biosafety. We are aware that iGEM has a mandatory Safety Form we have to complete in order to participate in the Giant Jamboree, however, we felt that simply filling out this form wasn’t enough. We wanted to develop a full risk assessment that included details iGEM didn’t require us to include in our Safety Form and we were able to do this with the help of the UANL iGEM team. They have an expert in biosafety on their team and we had a couple of video conferences where he gave us feedback on how to improve our risk assessment. Doing this risk assessment allows us to be more considerate of those who have the responsibility of handling genetically modified E. coli (the fishermen) and how the use of live bacteria could potentially contaminate our environment and maybe even pose risks to the fishermen. In return, we shared with the UANL team the videos we produced about iGEM and synthetic biology in both English and Spanish so they could expose various communities in Mexico to what we do at iGEM.