Team:Wroclaw/Human Practices

description health threat filter lab diary
human practices public engagement collaborations comic meetings
parts entrepreneurship safety
team attributions
judging form medals

Human Practices

Our project stems from our deep concern about the environment. When we realized how harmful and dangerous heavy metal pollution is, we decided that we need to act. Our aim is to make economically viable, biodegradable filters that will purify the air in our buildings. We carefully analyzed the field of biofilters by consulting specialists and reviewing publications, and we didn’t find any solution that would fully solve our problem. Existing filters is mainly odour or aerosols removal, but that’s not enough. We wanted our project to be safe, easy to use and publicly acceptable, so we have consulted our ideas with many professionals from the fields of biotechnology, environmental protection or microbiology. You can read more about our idea on this page.

In our work, we also got a lot of help from our professors. One of them was our main PI, BEng, PhD Dsc Zbigniew Lazar. As his daily work mostly involves dealing with Yarrowia lipolytica, he could direct our research and lab work – his help was priceless. Professor Waldemar Rymowicz was the one who presented the problem of air pollution in his course, so we got our idea thanks to him! Furthermore, he provided us with biological and research materials that we couldn’t have managed without.

At the very beginning of our brainstorming phase, we also got help from the famous professor Joanna Szyda, and the Bioinformatics Student Association supervisor, PhD Magda Mielczarek. They were some of the first people who gave us fresh and constructive criticism, which helped us see our ideas from a totally different angle.

After having finished our research and created the scheme of the project, we validated the idea with Dr Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro and his students from the Imperial College London. Dr Rodrigo is a world-reknowned specialist when it comes to the modifications of Yarrowia lipolytica. Hence, their help was crucial in boosting our confidence in the project.

We also had the honour of working with Dr Przemyslaw Nuc from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland). He was our mentor through our iGEM journey, and always had a good word for us. Beside mentoring, we also consulted him on the survey methodology.

We are well aware of how strict UE and Polish laws on GMO are. Public opinion about genetic modifications is rather negative. We conducted a short survey among people from different backgrounds to check how our ideas are perceived. The first part of our survey had contained questions about their knowledge of how harmful for our health and the environment heavy metals are, and how exactly they interfere with our organism. Next we asked them to express their opinions about synthetic biology – and then we showed them short presentation about our project and did our best to answer their concerns – mainly about GMO environmental contamination. In the last section we asked them if our presentation changed their mind and if they would use our product. Consequentially, we took extra vigilance about what organisms we are working on and how we will model our filter. If you're particularly interested in knowing how we engaged in the education process of the local community, please visit our Public Engagement and Education page.