Team:ASIJ Tokyo/Human Practices
HUMAN PRACTICES OVERVIEW
There are three aspects of human practices: integrated practices, collaboration with other iGEM teams, and educational outreach.
For integrated human practices, we were able to get advice from various different sources. Dr. Kagimoto, a founder of a biotech company, helped us understand the recent developments in gene editing and stem cell research in Japan. He also gave us further insights on how such technology can be combined and applied to treat mutational diseases in the future in a way that would benefit the patients. Our conversations with him inspired us to choose this topic for our project this year. Dr. Seyama, a researcher at Jutendo University, enhanced our background knowledge on A1AT Deficiency, the specific disease we decided to target in our project. Furthermore, we received advice on our construct design by Tokyo Tech and Bochan Lab, who suggested we use a histidine tag to improve our protein purification process.
Our team was able to reach out to other iGEM teams in order to share information and advice about our respective projects. We talked to Lacas Biobots through video chat and different iGEM teams in East Japan at a meetup. Through interactions with the other teams, we were able to gain insight on each other's projects and learn how the other teams applied synthetic biology in different ways.
Finally, we were able to implement educational outreach by leading a forensics lab during the ASIJ Summer Passport Camp program, holding a discussion with the GOA Medical Problem Solving Course regarding developments in genetic engineering, and presenting to ASIJ student parents during the High School Back-to-School Night.