Team:Calgary Ethics

Welcome to University of Calgary’s 2008 iGEM Ethics Team!

This is the first time an undergraduate student team will be presenting at the iGEM competition a project that is exclusively focused on investigating the ethical, environmental, economic, legal and social (E3LS) issues attached to synthetic biology> We are very excited and feel fortunate to be allowed to add this facet to iGEM. Our team consists of 3 undergraduate students with backgrounds in Biomedical Science and Health and Society. The primary goal of our project this year is to comprehend how much the general population, government agencies, industry, NGO’s, academic and high school students, are aware of synthetic biology and what they envision from this new approach to science. We also look into what the synthetic biology vision is from people who are known to be involved in synthetic biology. Our approach to pursuing this goal is such that, we are at the same time trying to inspire the minds to navigate through and acknowledge the present achievements, future potentials and possible pitfalls that would limit the future potential of synthetic biology and it’s overall possible implications in our everyday lives.

Is the world prepared for Synthetic Biology?

It wouldn't be too difficult for any of the participants of iGEM to give a well rounded definition of what synthetic biology is, the approach that it takes to incorporate engineering platform to life science, the importance and benefits of it's current applications (in medicine, fossil fuels, environment and technology), future potentials and an example of each of these aspects of synthetic biology. The main aim that synthetic biology strive to achieve is to make life better by securing resources, increasing production, protecting the environment, making new drugs/medicine, improving technology with a different and new touch than what has been applied before to achieve the same goal. Again it is important to mention that you are aiming for the betterment of life - the University of Calgary's iGEM ethics team is not here to find the pitfalls of your work but is here to find an approach together to explain synthetic biology to the general public (the actual benefiters of the products of synthetic biology) in a language that they can better relate to and learn/want to appreciate the field. During our work this summer, we collaborated with two wetlab teams of iGEM 2008 to evaluate the practical application and acceptance of their project in the society, and we were not surprised to find how many concerns they had related to ethical issues of biosafety, biosecurity, environmental effect of their engineered organism, how society will take their product, effectiveness, cost and benefits.

So one of the main focuses of our project was to understand where the general public stands in terms of their awareness about the current application of synthetic biology, what they think synthetic biology's potential is. Most importantly we strived to find out what are their expectations from synthetic biology, what are their fears/concerns in a way to convey their message to the synthetic biology practitioner community. Our approach was such that while asking them questions, we tended to encourage them to go out and search for information/literature themselves about current approaches without making any biases.

So are they ready? - The answer is neither yes nor no. The correct answer is that there is a huge gap in communication. From our research we found that many times a "technological manipulation" being identified both as "scary" and "beneficial" by a single individual at the same time. So where they stand is in a maze of confusion. The literatures in scientific terms are not easy for a non-biologist and a non-engineer to understand and many times it's the fear that "am I getting enough information of possible side-effects, other effect in molecular level in our body or environment?" We need to find an approach to eliminate this gap - either by going and talking to them in a way that's plausible, or listen to their concern in their language and give feedback in the same terms.

The Project:

Our team has written and sent out two online surveys (one written for high school students, another written for adults. But before doing that, we received ethical approval ( ). The purpose of this study was to better understand the level of knowledge the participants have about the emerging field of synthetic biology, what they feel the future of synthetic biology holds, what implications of advances in synthetic biology may be and what the framework of governance for synthetic biology should be. To start somewhere, we sent the link to our survey to 130 different people in the beginning, who were asked to send the link through their networks. We hoped that in this way we would reach a diverse group of people who are linked to government agencies, industries, Universities, NGO's and are from the general public. By doing so, we have received a broad spectrum of responses rich in diversity and perspectives. To (date) for adult survey we have (add how many responses from each)We also sent out a link specific for iGEM participants hoping that we can showcase what the thoughts of iGEM participants are.

Our survey analysis compares to some extent the differences of answers of synthetic biology practitioners (iGEM participants) and that of the general public. Through that analysis we highlighted significant difference in responses of synthetic biology's governance policy and biosafety concerns.

The survey for high-school participants takes in account of their level of knowledge and background in biology, technology, ethics and society. The high school survey contains more examples of current products and applications of synthetic biology at present. However, in doing so, we put much attention in making sure that the examples do not bias the understanding and thus the answers to our survey.

As of (date) we received 262 responses for the non-high school survey and 49 responses for the high school survey.

Presentations:

As an extension to our survey, our team also met with a group of high school students after they took our survey to provide answers to any further questions they had regarding our project, survey or the synthetic biology field itself. We also had a PowerPoint presentation that gave them a thorough overview of the field and encouraged a debate on its implications.

Collaboration:

Collaboration with the Guelph iGEM team 2008 We provide also E3LS feedback to the wetlab team from Calgary.

Collaboration with the Calgary Wetlab iGEM team 2008 We provide also E3LS feedback to the wetlab team from Calgary.

Collaboration with a presenter at Synbio 4.0 where we provide feedback on synbio regulation ideas.

Online Course in Synthetic Biology:

Another aspect of our project was to develop an online course on Synthetic Biology. This course is designed for a 13 week session.

Click on this link to find out more about the course (media:Synbio_course.pdf‎).