Team:Wroclaw/Collaborations

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human practices public engagement collaborations comic meetings
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Collaborations

We are involved in multiple collaborations, among them there is our own; the collaborative comic. Its aim is to gain social awareness, not only of our project but also of iGEM here in Poland. For this collaboration we asked several iGEM teams to send us photos of themselves in certain settings (e.g. outdoors, etc.), so that we’d have plenty to choose from for our template. We then did a short short contest on our projects Facebook page for our followers to choose from some of their favourite takes.

Teams involved in the collab:

The comic helped to raise awareness of the existence of the competition and its values, as well as putting synthetic biology in better light to the general public. Teams involved helped us gather traction and popularize iGEM contest in our area by engaging in our educative comics. They also helped raising awareness about the pollution problem that Wrocław, and many cities in Poland have. This involvement was really valuable to us, and helped us share iGEM values - about ethical synthetic biology use, across the globe.

The main idea of our comic was to gather attention to the pollution in polish cities. Our comic was made with that in mind, as well as our take on the issue. In later parts of the comic, we will bring closer to the public the issue with heavy metals and their after effects of prolonged exposure on human health.

In the meantime, we met a team from Russia and talked about the projects and iGEM in general, to help each other with understanding of the competition.

Apart from that, we’re also involved in iGEM Stockholm SynthEthics as one of the main initiators, helping them with forming questions for their questionnaire and with outreach. The questionnaire’s topic was the legality and public perception of bioengineering and synthetic biology. Like our comic, it helped raise awareness about the problems and solutions of synthetic biology.

As it turns out:

  • most people don’t believe we should genetically enhance humansli>
  • most people believe that the positives of gene therapy outweigh the negatives
  • only licensed researchers should be able to buy genes
  • almost all voted, that it is morally acceptable to modify microorganisms for human use
  • we should give more focus to biological threats that have low chance of occurring, but come with terrible consequences
  • the public was split on modifying animal genes to either help them with their fitness or behavior (e.g. fear of slaughter)
  • public believes extinct species should stay that way, unless balance of the ecosystem is heavily shifted (e.g. flies multiplying because of extinction of spiders)
  • public is split on whether we should bring genetically modified animals to yet uninhabited planets, if that helps us colonize them

The questionnaire gave us valuable insight on public opinion on certain things. It will help us, as a scientists understand better what is morally right and wrong concerning synthetic biology and gene edition.

In May, we participated in iGEM Bonn meeting and exchanged thoughts about our projects, while also validating each other’s ideas. We also took part in the Doulix workshop and gained valuable information about how to use their platform. We learned how to approach, and as a consequence gain sponsors, and understood better the competions. Also, we gained new friends.

We also helped by filling UAlberta iGEM team’s questionnaire.