Collaborations

Collaboration

Brazilian MEETUP- Jamboré brasileira

Our team member Heloísa was invited by the USP Lorena Team - to compose a table about Open Science together with Rita Wu. In total, 70 persons participated in the conversation regarding topics about Science in Brazil, Open Biotech and personal experiences while being a Biotech undergraduate student.

Heloísa also ministeres a workshop titled “What is citizen science? + Introdction to Digital Fabricarion”, which included a lecture and an Arduino workshop, with basic circuit and programing teachings.

UPRM weather contingency plan collaboration

>

We stood out for the UPRM team’s - collaboration request about weather contingency plan. We made a letter with what we think is important todo in an emergency situation. Our goal was to make an informal but understandable guide with things to consider planning beforehand and with tips for a moment of need, including how to deal with communication and resources to get the best and safest experience out of an emergency. The objective of the collaboration is to make a booklet with information from the teams that collaborate with it and we hope to see our ideas in the final product.

Collab with UNAMBG - Children’s book translation

At the invitation of the UNAMBG team -, we participated in a collaboration to translate, into our language, Brazilian Portuguese, a children's book about synthetic biology. It was a really interesting experience: we were able to notice the linguistic differences between languages, such as slangs, and how we can't just do literal translations. Not to mention that we embarked on the story of little Umay, a girl who wanted to help her grandfather who suffered from diabetes. This collab was an adventure to show the possibilities of using synthetic biology in an educational and relaxed way.

iGEM Virginia - iGEM Social Media Hub

We sent our social media information to help the creation of a convenient and easy way of communication between teams!

UNSW Australia - iGEM Contact Address directory

With the aim to facilitate communication between teams, we sent our contact address and social media links to iGEM team UNSW Australia!

King’s College London - Bio-security standards survey

Biosafety is also a very important aspect of every iGEM project and every institution that harbours an iGEM team. Due to this, iGEM UFRGS team members answered the bio-security survey from King’s college London Team.

Rice University - Rice University Meta Analysis

We sent them the main motivation of our project for their investigation regarding if there was an effect of location on the team's project! We are looking forward to see the results! FIND MORE

OUC-China - Maybe You Need a Comic Book!

Thinking about the significance of scientific divulgation and the need to spread the word of synthetic biology to the community, we made the translation of the comic book to Brazilian Portuguese. Our aim is to share this comic book in our social media and send it to another scientific divulgation groups, so it can be viewed by the biggest number of persons!

iGEM_MOSCOW

Our team members answered a survey about our awareness regarding the tick-borne diseases here in Brazil. This is an important issue in our country due to our tropical weather that favours the proliferation of ticks. Also, we have a rich abundance of ticks in our Atlantic Forest biome - that is fragmented due to antropic actions - favouring the contact of ticks and humans and disease transmission. Results

Colab Bielefeld

Considering the innovation involved in our project, we started writing a brief review about the regulation and the legislation related to the release of genetically modified microorganisms on the Brazilian environment. After this brief research, we observed that some countries have great differences on this kind of regulation. Then we decided to point out some of these contrasts and so, we asked for help from iGEM teams around the world. With similar objectives, we got together with Bielefeld-CeBiTec team and set some indicators to compare the GMO acceptance and regulation around the whole world.

Colab USP São Carlos

On August 4 we collaborated with iGEM team USP_SaoCarlos on an interview with 3 other brazilian iGEM teams. This kind of initiative is very important, once it takes to different parts of our country the impact that iGEM projects are causing. It also helped us to integrate with the other teams, strengthening the brazilian iGEM network.

And you can also listen to the complete podcast (in Brazilian Portuguese) HERE

Rice University - Rice University Meta Analysis

We sent them the main motivation of our project for their investigation regarding if there was an effect of location on the team's project! We are looking forward to see the results! FIND MORE

Collab GMO Legislation Around the World

One of the main things iGEM promotes is getting to know new people, different points of view, and stimulate teams collaboration efforts.

Our work has begun on an effort to map how legislation and the release of Genetic Modified Microorganisms works in the environment, as our project, GlyFloat, presupposes the use of GMMs, genetically engineered bacteria, in natural environments. However, throughout our research, we faced many obstacles to find information about GMMs: from legislation to news. Overall, unfortunately, a lot of data is missing; GMMs use is generally restricted to the production of biomolecules or medicines and its environmental release is incipient.

Then, we focused on the also relevant research on GMO crops, since it is one of the mainly debated topics in biotechnology, and glyphosate much relates to this topic. We selected 10 different countries, from 5 different continents in order to analyze these differences in laws and regulation of GM crops.

It is surprising to realize that legislation regarding genetically modified organisms around the globe differs quite substantially. Only 5 countries are responsible for 91 percent of the global area of GMO crops. Some countries are very strict about it, while others are more permissive towards GM crops.

As a result of this collab, we developed a spreadsheet containing information about the following topics: Legal number of GM crop varieties; Area on which GM crops are cultivated; time required for approval of GM crops; Number of authorities required for GM approval and obligatory GMO labeling. We further described our conclusions in the paragraphs following the spreadsheet.

The research was done consulting many different official websites from the government of the following countries, recent publications in scientific papers and global institutions. Furthermore, many other iGEM Teams supported our idea, sending us some info about their country of origin.They are: CU; LUND; CCU_Taiwan; UM_Macau; Sorbonne_U_Paris; Concordia-Montreal and TU_Eindhoven; Although there are many papers related to the subject, official information about the exact number of cultivated gm crops was a slightly more challenging number to get.

EU:

In the European Union, countries adept to OGM use in the environment must follow the directive 2001/18 / CE. EU law also requires any approved GM products to be clearly labelled. Even though GM crops are allowed in Europe, each country can have its own interpretation towards genetically modified organisms, which can change the way GMOs are perceived nationally.

Sweden:

Sweden states that for the realisation of activities with genetically modified organisms, a risk assessment must be sent to the Swedish Work Environment Authority. Swedish law has added an ethical aspect to its GMO regulations that EU directives do not have, which stipulates that the use and application of GMOs should be done with ethical considerations (Riksdagen.se, 2017; Habibi, 2018). Sweden has grown only once a transgenic organism: the Amflora potato. Its activities ended in 2012, when another GM potato not approved for commercial use mixed in the field trials (Habibi, 2018). GM crops are currently grown in field trials and also in greenhouses and laboratories (Habibi, 2018). In relation to GMMs, most GMM-activities are research related (472), followed by commercial use (73) and high schools research (14).

UK:

In the United Kingdom, to work with commercial GMOs, one must send an application, under EU guidelines, directly to EFSA, while requests for research-related release of GMOs are considered at national level. There is no commercial growth of GMOs, although the country imports GMO crops for animal feed. There already have been experimental trials of GM potatoes, wheat and Camila sativa on the last years. Recently, Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, stated that he wants the UK to become a world leader in genetically modified food technologies. This has caused great concern over the british farmers, who have their plantations non-transgenic. About the UK GMMs, 881 installations have been approved to date (December 2016).

Egypt:

Egypt is in the process of developing a regulatory framework to conduct safely assessments about GMOs. It shall particularly establish the protocols for procedures, rules of registration, licensing and handling of genetically modified food, according to Codex Alimentarius Commission standards adopted by international bodies. At the moment, Egypt only produces GMOs food for research purposes, and allows GMOs imports upon authorization. In the country, there is a big clash involving the cultivation or not of GMOs, as can be seen in the case of 2018, where an aridity-resistant GMO wheat was not released on the market, due to lack of legislation, even though the project was developed in governmental science sectors.

India:

In India, all genetically modified organisms and products are regulated by the 'Rules 1989'. The only GMO crop variety allowed for cultivation is cotton. The implementation of Bt cotton was marked by controversy: it suffered a spate of pink bollworms, and its liberation is also linked to socio economic problems, due to conflicts with the traditional cotton production. Currently, there are also recurring problems of illegal GMO crops cultivation, such as Bt brinjal, increasing the risk of loss of biodiversity. The Oxitec mosquito has been developed in India with successful matings with local strains, as well as GE silkworms, both being contained trials.

Canada:

GM related subjects in Canada are regulated by Health Canada, and according to ISAAA, there are 183 GM Crop Events for 15 different species approved in the country. While on the EU GM foods are mandatory labeled, in Canada labeling the presence of GMOs in particular food is voluntary unless there is a health or safety concern. As one of the major producers of genetically modified crops in the world, Canada faces issues regarding the subject, as many people in the country think GM foods may cause health problems and the labeling of gm foods should be mandatory.

China:

As to China, regulations for GMOs are a responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA), the National Agricultural GMO Biosafety Committee (NABC) and the National Crop Variety Registration Committee (CVRC). Even though more than 50 crops are approved for import (Jin et al., 2019), mainly cotton and papaya species of gm crops planted in national territory (ISAAA). Nonetheless, according to recent research (Cui, 2018) public perception of GMOs are still very negative. Furthermore, illegal crop cultivation has been headlines in newspapers in the country.

Brazil:

Following USA, Brazil is the second country with the greatest GMO crops area, and GMOs use in general. The crops are applied for feed, food and industry. Besides the plants, Brazil had approved several GM microorganisms, including pathogens agents for therapeutic purposes and also industrial fermentation and bioproduction. Furthermore, a GM mosquito was developed in Brazil, and approved for release, used for populational control of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Considering the high number of GMO crops and the application of GMM and even GM animals Brazil legislation, compared with the rest of the world, is one of the most flexible with GMOs use, different from what we thought, due to the general bureaucracy in the country.

Australia:

In Australia the most remarkable feature is the restriction of GMO crops, once 61% of the australian landmass is for agricultural production, this could improve these production. About Australia, one of the most remarkable points was the disagreement of some number on different databases. While on ISAAA database there are 135 GM Crop Events approved, once they consider events that are not allowed for commercialization, on the Australian Office of the Gene Technology Regulator website, there are only 23 GM crops allowed for commercialization and only one species, canola, for human nutrition. Thus showing us how the data source can lead to misunderstandings, even dealing with public and open-access information. We can also conclude that Australia has an intermediary acceptance of the GMOs use.

Germany:

In Germany, there are no GMOs that can be legally grown outside of the lab or used for commercial use. However, there are many GMOs that are cultivated in other countries that have been introduced in feed and food. Once GMOs were legally cultivated in Germany - the MON810 corn and the Amflora potato. This changed when, for MON810, the authorization had to be renewed and Germany opted-out of the legalization, in 2009. In 2012, the Ukraine was sued against the cultivation of the Amflora potato in the EU due to procedural errors, and BASF did not pursue a new authorization of the potato afterwards.

The question, what causes the strict regulations for the release of GMOs in Germany and the EU in general arises upon learning about these situations. To understand where that comes from, one has to have a closer look at the procedure of GMOs in this area.

If a company or research group wants to get authorization for the release of GMOs in Germany, they have to get in touch with the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety. The Federal Office verifies the completeness of the request. When the FOCPF is content, the public is informed about the planned release and can comment on the published plans over a timespan of four weeks. At the same time, the FOCPFS works together with the political leaders of the federal state in which the release shall take place, as well as established scientific institutions to conduct risk assessments of the impact on humans, animals and the environment and biosafety studies. Lastly, the EU is informed. As long as it is not intended for commercial use, they do not get a say in the final decision.

At the moment there is one authorized GMO released event taking place: a whine plant with increased fungal resistance. Its release was approved in 1999 and expires in December of 2019. When this period ends, there won’t be any GMOs legally released into the environment in Germany anymore. There have been many more experimental releases within that time frame; however, most of them ended in the early 2000s and no new authorizations for release were issued since 2012.

USA:

The United States of America are rather liberal when it comes to the cultivation of GMO crops. By 2018, 90% of all domestic corn, cotton, soybean, surgarbeet and canola fields were genetically modified. Most of them had an increased resistance towards herbicides or a higher insect resistance. 80% of corn and 82% of cotton had both.

In total, there are 130 genetically engineered crops that are unregulated and can therefore be planted, grown and shipped without requiring an additional permission. To acquire this status, the GM organism cannot have a risk of being a plant pest, it has to be safe for other organisms and for animal or human consumption, if one intends to use it for that. The testing is conducted by the companies that strive releasing the genetically engineered organism, but the evaluation of those risk assessments is conducted by national agencies: The Animal and Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This year, APHIS suggested a new way of assessing the necessity of regulating genetically engineered organisms. They don’t want the method of engineering to be relevant, but the final traits of the organism. Therefore, plants transformed using plant pests should no longer be considered plant pests automatically and plants with similar genetic modifications as could be obtained in breeding, the plant pest risk should be considered equally high.

Additionally, during our meetings, we noticed how we got surprised by different things regarding GMO legislation around the world. Thus, we thought about writing a “points of view” text, in order to expose our perceptions in different social and geographical contexts. This discussion was synthesized in the following text.

POV UFRGS_Brazil:

POV Bielefeld-CeBiTec:

In Brazil, we’re used to listening about gm crops, since over 50 million hectares are destined to gm crops. Recent approval of agrichemicals mainly destined to these cultives, such as glyphosate based herbicides are relatively frequent on the news. Furthermore, gm products labelling in Brazil is mandatory and much discussed in recent times. Overall, we find it very difficult to find data about GMOs. We would think this would be easier given its importance for world food as well as for the development of new technologies in health and for the environment. Considering the high number of GMO crops and the application of GMM and even GM animals; Brazil legislation, compared with the rest of the world, is one of the most flexible with GMOs use, different from what we thought, due to the general bureaucracy in the country.

In Australia the most remarkable feature is the restriction of GMO crops, once 61% of the australian landmass is for agricultural production, this could improve the production. We knew that the European Union GMO legislation is much stricter than the one we have in Brazil, so it was expected that no transgenic plants would be grown in Sweden and England, as well as the labelling of GMO products be mandatory in both countries.

We find it amazing that there is much GMMs research in Swedish high schools. Besides that, we were stunned about the case of the production of Amflora potato in the country. It took a long time for it to be approved and when it began to be produced, the crops were contaminated by another unauthorized GMO potato. Therefore, the potato stopped being cultivated and the responsible company closed its activities in the country! This is not common in Brazil: when an environmental disaster happens, the responsible companies do not shut down…

About England, we were surprised by Boris Johnson's recent quote about the GMO production in England: “Let's liberate the UK's extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules." We did not imagine this stance, as there is a strong anti-GMO culture, as well as all the UK cultives are non-transgenic. May this be the starting point for Europe to change its mind about GMOs?

It was surprising that Egypt forbids GMO cultivation, although it imports many GMOs varieties. Given its arid climate, we were sure that there would be some GMO production that would dodge this circumstance. In addition, anti-GMO resistance appears to be quite strong, as well as incidences of illegal use of toxic substances in agricultural production. Regarding India, we found it impressive that the governing laws about GMOs were very old: from 1989. Although, it is not totally respected, and the problems of irreversible cross-contamination due to the illegal cultivation of other GMO varieties are recurrent. We were surprised that the only variety allowed for cultivation is cotton. In addition, we think it is progressive for the country to allow research with Oxitec and GM silkworms mosquitoes.

It was unexpected to find that Canada does not require mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods, which is voluntary unless there is an explicit health or safety concern. As one of the main producers of GM crops, there are movements of those in the country who believe the labelling should be mandatory.

On the other hand, it was interesting to find that China - also one of the largest producers of gm crops - needs, on average, much less time to get a gmo approved, even though the project has to go through three main institutions to do so. Makes us wonder about the bureaucracy in other countries, that require 7 to 11 years to get a gm crop approved such as in Brazil. Furthermore, as a study from 2018 points out, almost half of the chinese population have a negative perception of genetically modified foods, which may explain the mandatory labelling of gm foods in the country.

Coming from Germany, a country that strictly regulates the use of GMOs under any circumstances and does not allow any genetically modified organisms to be released, it was rather surprising, that there are countries that don’t only allow the release of GMOs, but have more than 100 kinds of genetically modified crops on the market.

It was rather startling that in the USA the use of 130 genetically modified plants is not regulated anymore and that companies do not have to get permits or even notify the government that and where they are planting those GMOs. It left us even more surprised that there are several thousand more GMOs on the fields in the USA that are monitored and are not used in food, feed or any other application just yet.

The fact that there are Genetically Modified Microorganisms (GMMs) with an authorization for release at all, totaling to 39 in Brazil and Australia, was another surprise to us. The rules set for risk assessments in the EU make it rather unlikely that a GMM would pass the regulatory process, no matter how many safety measures have been taken to construct a save organism and to prevent its spreading. Coming from a precautionary point of view, the tedious risk assessments ensure safety – and as unlikely as any negative consequences of releasing a GMM into the environment might be, the EU wants to prevent them without any doubt. Since eliminating the doubt is only possible, if the organism is not released, this is the option the EU usually choses. Seeing that other countries accept and live with that doubt, left us startled – most Germans would not be okay with those policies.

Another thing that was rather new to us was that countries as the USA and Canada do not enforce the labeling of products that contain GMOs. While we are insecure about the clarity of the definition of GMO and the awareness that the regular consumer has towards this definition, transparency is considered to be incredibly important for democracy in Germany and in the EU. Even though the acts of authorities don’t always live up to the high expectancies for transparency among the people, this is often called out and complained about. Therefore, labeling the origin of products in the supermarket is important to many Germans, allowing for a more informed consumer decision. Whether this should also be true for GMO-products has to be discussed, mostly due to the varying definition of GMOs all over the world. Is an organism that is produced with random mutagenesis genetically modified? How about a cross-bred plant? What if a CRISPR/Cas system had been used?

The definitions are different depending on the law – and vary even more widely on the minds of consumers. If a consumer does not properly understand a label, labeling GMO products might not lead to a more, but rather a less informed choice. However, we do believe that some kind of labeling, be it GMO or non-GMO or naming the plant variety that had been used might help the consumer to make an informed decision. That the legal situation in other countries enables the selling of GMO products without labeling them might be another approach that would not be accepted by many Germans due to the lack of transparency and the impact that this might have on their informed decisions.

After much discussion about these differences, talking to people from other origins, with different perceptions than ours here in Brazil, we realized how divergent some topics related to gm crops are, such as the surprising diverse time required for approval of a new gm crop around the world, or even the contrasting number of approved gm plants in different countries. We would further like to point out for the need to make this information more easily available to common knowledge, since it is of major importance for people to know this kind of regulation about their home countries, and the countries which import/export gm related products. It was with this intention that this collab effort was developed and we do hope to favor the dissemination of this sort of information.

Sustainability is ours goal

Having in mind the social impact of Glyfloat on society and putting in perspective The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set up by United Nations as the most urgent challenges facing our world, we contribute to attaining some of these goals.

Providing perspectives of development of sustainable technologies, creating partnerships with the community to promote awareness for sustainable development, lifestyle in harmony with nature to reduce the release of chemical waste that impacts the human health and the environment are few of the many examples of how we impact our planet and the society we live.

Some of the goals Glyfloat fits in:

3.9 By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination.

6.3 By 2030, e scientifimprove water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally.

6.6 By 2020, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes.

6.A By 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water- and sanitation-related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse technologies.

6.B Support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management.

8.2 Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors.

9.4 By 2030, upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable, with increased resource-use efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes, with all countries taking action in accordance with their respective capabilities.

9.B Support domestic technology development, research and innovation in developing countries, including by ensuring a conducive policy environment for, inter alia, industrial diversification and value addition to commodities.

12.4 By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.

12.7 Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities.

12.8 By 2030, ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature.

12.A Support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production.

14.1 By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.

14.A Increasic knowledge, develop research capacity and transfer marine technology, taking into account the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Criteria and Guidelines on the Transfer of Marine Technology, in order to improve ocean health and to enhance the contribution of marine biodiversity to the development of developing countries, in particular small island developing States and least developed countries.

15.1 By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains and drylands, in line with obligations under international agreements.

15.A Mobilize and significantly increase financial resources from all sources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems.

17.6 Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms, including through improved coordination among existing mechanisms, in particular at the United Nations level, and through a global technology facilitation mechanism.

17.7 Promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed.

17.8 Fully operationalize the technology bank and science, technology and innovation capacity-building mechanism for least developed countries by 2017 and enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology.

17.16 Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries.

17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships