Team:Rice/Integrated HP
Integrated Human Practices
Engaging Experts to Choose Strains
Rice iGEM engaged experts from a variety of fields and industries during the development of our project to figure out which bacterial strains we should use.
Safety Considerations in Strain Choice
We met with Petko Ivanov and were able to discuss the intersection of environmental and health policy with genetic engineering. We also talked about public concerns on the modification of bacteria. Through our conversation, we learned about the potential dangers of using pathogenic bacterial strains and antibiotic resistance; this information helped us to decide what bacteria strains and antibiotics to use in our project.
Which Strains Are Useful?
In addition to choosing safe strains to work with, we also wanted to work with strains that are useful in other fields. We met with Dr. Daniel Wagner, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice. His area of study is vertebrate morphogenesis, and he is an advocate for interdisciplinary work. In this conversation, we discussed possible applications of our project in different strains and public concerns on the modification of bacteria.
Our team contacted several experts in other fields, including Dr. Aaron Regberg and Dr. Lynn Rothschild of NASA. Through these conversations we learned some ways in which these experts use microbes in their work, what problems they have encountered while using microbes, and what new developments they believe would help their projects most. From this feedback and information, we were able to brainstorm ideas to make our project more applicable at an governmental level. We then revisited our project design and revised some of our strain choices.
Educating Others About Non-model Organisms
To complement the execution of our project, we wanted to develop interest in non-model bacterial strains outside of academia. We therefore developed educational programs to inform people about non-model bacterial strains.
Our program involves activities for three different levels. Elementary school students will have a hands-on activity that helps them learn the difference between model and non-model organisms, and high school students and the general public will have the ability to delve more deeply into Rice iGEM’s research and public policy. Our goal is to expand interest in synthetic biology and the applications of non-model organisms.