Team:Tacoma RAINmakers/Human Practices
Team:ECUST/Lab/Notebook
Integrated Human Practices
As our team’s goal was to create a product for the community, integrating human practices was vitally important.
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Sue’s Tech Kitchen, the creation of Randi Zuckerberg, is a nationwide event dedicated to getting people excited about science through food. It’s known for its’ 3D printed smores and miracle berries, but it also serves as an opportunity for local groups to share their projects and visions with the community. We held a booth at the event in Tacoma, and had a blast telling our community all about our project. We created a mockup of our project with pH strips to represent the sensor, and solutions of a known acidity to represent water samples from around Puget Sound. Kids loved the idea of putting what looked like paper, into what looked like water, and seeing the paper change colors before their eyes. Adults were more excited about the idea of getting to test their own water and get accurate results that were easy to read. On a whiteboard, we set up a magnetic puzzle of our plasmid parts. Guests got to put together the puzzle as fast as they could, and the best time of each day won a cool water bottle. We met some incredible people, including a woman who helped create the map of arsenic contamination caused by the smelter. We had many people ask to buy test strips, but since the sensor isn’t complete, they settled for signing up for the email list. The event gave us great insight on what matters to the community, and we even got ideas on how to expand the sensor in the future!
To continue familiarizing ourselves with problems caused by arsenic contamination in the environment, we turned to our local health department. We were able to get an interview with Mr. Greg Tanbara, a Health Promotion Coordinator for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. Mr. Tanbara analyzes the environmental damage caused by the Asarco Plant destruction and connects with members of the community that have been affected. He told us that the state has allocated 180 million dollars to revitalizing the soil in the 1000 square mile radius most heavily contaminated by the plant’s destruction. As of today, approximately 90 million dollars have been spent on the area’s recovery, but only a small fraction of potentially dangerous areas have been tested. With the information gained from meeting with Mr. Tanbara, we learned how crucial it was for our project to be both easily useable and affordable for homeowners. The creation of an at-home test for arsenic will allow citizens to test the soil and water themselves, before requiring assistance from the health department.
Our team was lucky enough to get a meeting with David Lloyd, CEO and Co-Founder of FREDsense Technologies. FREDsense is a Canadian startup based on the 2013 and 2012 Calgary iGEM projects. The focus of the company is to create easily usable field tests for environmental toxins. FRED (Functional Robust Electrochemical Detector) made his first appearance in 2012 alongside OSCAR (Optimized System for Carboxylic Acid Remediation). While OSCAR, the “destroy component” of the project, has not been developed since, FRED (renamed Field-Ready Electrochemical Detector) has made incredible strides since then. Today there are four FRED systems available for pre-order or trial on the FREDsense website, as well as the option of custom sensor development to fit your needs. As an iGEM veteran, current member of the iGEM Human Practices Alumni Committee, and experienced biosensor developer, Mr. Lloyd had welcome advice for us. His guidance helped us develop a plan for what our sensor needed, both ethically, and entrepreneurially.
Earlier in the iGEM season, we had a morning interview and lecture with Dr. Jeff Nivala, Sr. Research Scientist and P.I. at University of Washington, as well as a recent addition to the Forbes “30 under 30” list. Dr. Nivala is most known for his research on the storage and transmission of information through molecular barcodes made of DNA and proteins. He has also been an integral part of the development of nanopore sensing technology as a method of protein analysis, which he believes to be the first step in decoding the vast complexities of whole proteomes. After recovering from our initial starstruck reactions, we were thrilled to hear his insight on our project!
