Team:SJTU-BioX-Shanghai/Human Practices
Overview of Human Practices
Charles Dickens wrote in his novel: This is the best time, this is the worst time. At the same time as the rapid development of biotechnology, we are also increasingly caught in the situation: the separation of research and the market, the separation of scholars and the public, as well as the separation of science and humanity. Based on our project Mulan, we established a new model of human practices: "L-M-P-H-E" model and hope to promote the connection between research and market, the communication between scholars and the public, as well as the combination between science and humanity, and in this way, we can help construct a society that can productively and safely apply biological technology.
"L-M-P-H-E" model means "laboratory-market-public-humanity-education". This model of human practices starts from the project design in laboratory, including professors in different fields. And then do market research and carry out public survey related to the project. In this way, we can connect the researchers, market and public. Moreover, "L-M-P-H-E" model requires to do more deep research on humanity like philosophy and ethics behind the project. Finally, eduction is a essential step to open a bright future that could safely and productively use biotechnology.
Human practices run through our projects as the soul. As gene editing became a focus topics in life science, we conducted a large scale survey and comprehesive statistical analysis on public's attitude towards CRISPR gene editing. Realising the fact that the public is generally worried about the safety of gene editing, we decided to develop a detection and reporting system for gene editing off-target incidents to improve the safety of gene editing technology. Besides, the divided opinions we knew from the survey indicate the huge controversy in society about gene editing. So we conducted depth research on philosophy and law about gene editing and finally choose to edit simple prokaryotes that could promote to the application and acceptance of CRISPR system but with few controversies and risks. Therefore, based on recording off-target signals, we further propose a general information recording and reading system based on CRISPR. And after academic dialogue with scholars from different fields and visit to Hongxun Biotech Company, we gave up using sequencing as a means of reading information, and determinated to use fluorescence as a report to achieve a real-time recording and reading system.
Based on our project, we are committed to promoting two-way communication between scientific research and the public. On one hand, realizing the fact that there is a general lack of understanding of modern biotechnology among ordinary people, we provided a series of educational activities. On the other hand, we encouraged ordinary people and scholars in other fields to express their views on scientific research through our social survey. We hope to form a good platform for researchers, humanities, companies and the public to communicate with each other, helping construct a society that can productively and safely apply biological technology.
The whole pattern of human practices and our project can be shown below.
You can find more detailded detailed information about the five parts of human practices below.
See more about Laboratory Here.
See more about Market Here.
See more about Public Here.
See more about Humanity Here.
See more about Education Here.
SJTU-BioX-Shanghai
Contact us: sjtuigem@gmail.com
Bio-X Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Dongchuan Rd. 800