Team:Calgary/Human Practices

In order to form a synthetic biology community, it is very important to involve certain segments that would play a significant role in community formation. These segments include the large Corporate Sector (interest lies in funding and thus more research and innovations) and the Education Sector (involvement encourages more research and development in the field). Both segments play a critical role in sustaining the future of synthetic biology.  

However, attracting interest from these two sectors of our community is not an easy task. The majority of the population in these segments probably have never heard of the new field of synthetic biology. Furthermore, there has not been much done about the ethical issues surrounding synthetic biology, which could raise questions concerning the potential harms and benefits of the field. These concerns are some of the communication barriers that stand between the corporate and education sectors, and the field of synthetic biology. Although, the complete removal of these barriers is impossible, their impact of these communication barriers could be significantly reduced. This reduction in the impact could lead to greater involvement of the education corporate sectors in the field of synthetic biology.  

Keeping these considerations in mind, our University of Calgary iGEM team tailored its approach towards the human practices aspect of our project in a way that would try to reduce the impact of these communication barriers and therefore would lead to greater involvement of the education and corporate sectors in the field of synthetic biology. And as mentioned above, these segments would play a pivotal role in the formation of a synthetic biology community. In order to increase the impact of our human practices approach, we divided our human practices team into three areas namely ethics, marketing and, education and outreach. Each area would have its own individual focus but in the end, their goal would be the same and that is to work towards the formation of a synthetic biology community. Our University of Calgary iGEM team strongly believes that it is very important for these three areas to interact with each other because all areas are related to each in some way or the other. Since the formation of a synthetic biology community was our University of Calgary iGEM team’s long term goal, we assigned each area specific short term goals and milestones that would be accomplished before the iGEM Jamboree. The following is a brief summary of the goals of the three areas of our Human Practices aspect of our project:

The written paper examined the varying issues that surround the emerging field of synthetic biology. The main areas that we focused on are environmental, encomic ethical, legal and social issues that arise in synthetic biology. Some of these issues include:  

* What beneficial and dentrimental effects can result from these biological developments. For example, if a biological approach is taken in the oil and gas industry, what kind of environmental and economical effect will this decision lead to?

* What kind of ethical isssues arise from this new emerging field?

The ethics conference was held in Second Life. The public can now contribute and express their concerns and opinions regarding the issues that surround synthetic biology. Our Second Life project is intended to provide an educational platform for molecular and synthetic biology. By holding an ethics conference in SL, we hope that the public is better informed of the issues that surround biology. This will also be a creative format to explore issues and allow the open discussion of ethics.

The University of Calgary iGEM outreach team had a main focus of raising the profile of synthetic biology in Alberta. Our goal was to expose the public to not only the University of Calgary iGEM project and competition but also synthetic biology as a general topic as well. is in charge of getting our message out to the public. This will ensure the continual growth of synthetic biology especially in Alberta. This year, we raise the awareness of synthetic biology in Alberta by:  

* Created informative sessions for high school students: Exposure to these young minds can help promote the field of synthetic biology and have potential candidates in future research in these fields.

* Summer Camp for high school students: This camp was aimed to expose high school students to the work that goes behind molecular biology research. Some of the activities that the students are able to perform are PCRs, Restriction Digest, Gel Electrophoresis, Cloning, etc. Not only do they gain a general understanding of molecular biology, but they also get exposed to the work that the University of Calgary is involved with.  

* Collaboative project with UChicago: Both teams aim to create an outreach kit future iGEM teams in the competition.  

Our University of Calgary iGEM team was able to raise more than $100,000 dollars for our project this year. Our sponsors range from several departments from the University of Calgary to research and development, and oil and gas companies.