Team:KULeuven/Ethics/Our project

• General
• Our project
• Survey

Our project

Synthetic biology is defined as the design and fabrication of biological components and systems that don’t exist in a natural environment. It’s also the redesign and fabrication of existing biological systems. (1) This is exactly what we did in our project. We used components of different organisms and put these together to make our own designed organism. For example, we used a couple of receptors from Agrobacterium tumefaciens for the vanillin detection. This means that we created an organism that normally doesn’t exist in nature. It’s important to notice that this can have a major effect on the environment if the organism is released. It can become stronger than other similar and natural organisms and eventually displace all indigenous organisms. Our organism is designed in such a way that it only can exist if it get’s the proper nutrients. When it becomes released in a natural environment it’s to weak to survive. Therefore we didn’t put a dead-man-switch in the design. The organisms can grow till the nutrients are gone and then they just die. A second reason to leave the dead-man-switch out of the design is the fact that the organism doesn’t interfere with humans or other organisms. In our project the organisms stay safely in a container and in other applications it can stay in the laboratory where it’s used (e.g. bioreactor). A third argument that made us decide that the dead-man-switch wasn’t necessary is the fact that the strain of Escherichia coli we used can’t do any harm to people and is to weak compared to other organisms. All these things and the purpose of our project make it possible to minimize the risks of modifying organisms.

(1) Arjun Bhutkar. (2005). Synthetic Biology: Navigating the Challenges Ahead.