Team:Todai-Tokyo/Ethics

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the notebook

for the deprivation: We, team Todai-Tokyo makes synthetic biology known to Japanse people who do not quite understand biology.

Genetic engineering is tightly connected to our daily lives, through food and medical industry. However, genetic engineering is not well known among Japanese, As you can see. (a survey of whether they have know about genetic engineering.)

Todai-Tokyo conducted a survey; we asked 121 people who do not know well about genetic engineering and 45 people with knowledge of it, "Are you reluctant to eat GM food?" The following graphs are the result.
(left: people who do not have enough knowledge of genetic engineering
right: people with knowledge of genetic engineering)

People who lack knowledge tend to dislike GM food, according to these results.
We concluded that the repulsion toward GM food derives from the lack of knowledge of genetic engineering.
Since GM food will gradually increase in amount, we decided to disperse the knowlege of genetic engineering.

Todai-Tokyo contribute deepening thier understanding by the following activities.
we opened a Japanese website that explains the basics of synthetic biology and the
answers to the most frequent asked questions about genetic engineering, in
an easy-to-understand format.

Through such activities we successfully enlightened the general public for synthetic biology.
We successfully enlightened general public for synthetic biology.

on safety (BREAD)

One of our project is to make some bread by a newly synthesized yeast. So, this project has a problem of the public safety.
we answered some questions in the iGEM judging form.we show the questions and answers below.

Q1.Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researchers safety, public safety, or environmental safety?

researcher safety, environmental safety -> Our experiments (and maybe experiments of all the iGEM team) require P2 level containment.
public safety -> In bread project, we make GM bakers' yeast.

Q2.Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

Environmental Science Center:
surveillance of industrial wastes, chemicals, http://www.esc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
public safety -> In bread project, we make GM bakers' yeast.

Office of Life Science Research Ethics and Safety: Science Center: surveillance of industrial wastes, chemicals, http://www.esc.u-tokyo.ac.jp (web page is only for researchers and students the University of Tokyo) They publish guidelines concerned to biological research and safety and supervise research groups.

Q3.What does your local biosafety group think about your project?
Concerning experimental procedures themselves, it raises no problems as we are doing our experiments according to the guidelines of these committees. However, as we are to make GM bakers' yeast, we have to consider governmental laws and regulations. To make our GM yeast to serve as public use, we must confirm the following * the yeast . * the vector used to sub-clone the gene and the marker used to select the GM yeast is well described. * the yeast does not make toxic agents, nor raise acute or chronic toxicity or allergy.

Q4.Do any of the new BioBrick parts that you made this year raise any safety issues?
Yes. We submitted a part of the Bread project. If the part is used to make GM food, like our project, it would raise public safety issues.

Q. If yes, did you document these issues in the Registry?
Yes.

on safety (TOBACCO): We had a questionnaire that asked the participants what they thought of our "TOBACCO project".>>the result the participants are the students and graduates of the University of Tokyo".The answers of the questionnarie are wrriten in Japanese, so we can't list all here. However, we show you here some answers and the brief result that are very interesting and thought-provoking.

Explanation to The Public: We scientists must explain what we are doing and what are going on