We spoke with Dr. Athanasios Zovoilis, a faculty member at the University of Lethbridge’s department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dr. Zovoilis has vast experience in cell transfection. He explained to us some of the challenges associated with cell transfections in eukaryotic cell lines as well as how cell transfections vary significantly between cell lines. Some of the cell transfection techniques that he mentioned were lipofection: using lipid membranes with an epitope tag for delivery, electroporation: electrically inducing pores in the cell membranes of cells for ready uptake, the use of transfecting agents (which vary in composition), and even some encapsulating proteins such as Qiagen’s dendrimer based SuperFect Transfection Reagent. The typical challenges associated with these techniques are that they can cause stress for the cells, leading to cell death, or unintended gene expression. Primary neural cell lines from mice however, face difficulty in their transfection affinity as well as consistency in their transfection rates. Using a protein nanocompartment such as Arc-Gag could be a good step in making such improvements since it has a natural tropism for mouse neural cells. Testing a fluorescence transfection of a primary mouse neural cell line would help to show if Arc-Gag could be used as a transfecting agent in mouse cell culture.

We spoke with Dr. Justin Pahara, the CSO for Amino Labs to discuss the utility of our project for researchers and industrial applications. He said that protein nanocompartments would be a useful delivery system that can be tuned to deliver a variety of cargos with increased specificity depending on their chemical structure and functionalization. One possible application could be in increasing transformation efficiency during transfections of various cell types. Further, compartmentalization at the molecular scale using phages is often difficult and intimidating from a biosafety perspective. A simple plasmid-based expression system of capsid proteins built for bacteria or yeast could make nano-encapsulation much more accessible to non-experts who are keen to learn molecular biology techniques or researchers who want to become familiar with biological encapsulation and delivery. The “tuning” of the capsid proteins to have different chemical characteristics is an advanced undertaking. Having a software application to help with the capsid protein design would enable those with less experience and the broader scientific community to begin working with encapsulation. Effectively, the software application would give the user a starting point to learn about how protein capsids work. Overall, this interview was helpful for informing our construct design and confirming this would be a useful tool for researchers. Justin and Julie Legault, the CEO of Amino Labs, are also releasing a book called From Zero to Genetic Engineering Hero this month (https://amino.bio/products/learn-genetic-engineering-the-genetic-engineering-hero-book). This book is the perfect journey for students to learn the basics of engineering bacteria - From covering the basics and learning about DNA, extracting proteins that you’ve engineered bacteria to create, to even control genetic circuits, these are the topics you need to know before you start innovating on your iGEM project.

We spoke with Dr. Vanessa Meier-Stephenson, an MD-PhD working as a Postdoctoral Fellow in collaboration effort at the University of Lethbridge and the University of Calgary. During her PhD, she worked on drug design and told us that packaging methods for small molecules are designed to ensure that the drug can survive the acidic conditions of the stomach. Additionally, some larger drugs such as vancomycin cannot diffuse naturally across cell membranes. She suggested that for our protein nanocompartment system, it would be effective for this application by helping with moving larger molecules across membranes and for ensuring a smaller concentration of molecules would be required for certain cell types. In her own work, she said that there are difficulties in doing transfection assays using cell lines for Hepatitis B. She suggested that it would be useful if tags could be added to capsids to make them specific for different cell lines to increase the modularity of our system. Vanessa also suggested that we would need to look into toxicity levels in the cells and the potential immune response for safety considerations. Overall, this interview helped identify that there are issues with trying to transfect some cell lines, helped inform our construct design, and safety issues we may encounter for the drug delivery application.

We spoke with Brigitte Cadieux, a senior policy analyst for new and emerging technologies, Jennifer Mihowich, who works in the biosafety risk assessment unit, and Melanie Sabourin, a biosafety education officer from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to discuss the regulations surrounding protein nanocompartments. They suggested we look through the regulations across the different agencies carefully as terminology is not always the same. In Canada products and pathogens are regulated and not technologies so there are currently no regulations for the use of our system as a technology. However, under some legislation, virus-like particles are considered microorganisms and that legislation would still apply to them. They told us that under the acts that PHAC monitors, our PNCs would be classified as Risk Group 1 and thus exempt from their regulations. In terms of explaining our project to non-scientist audiences, we were advised to change our language to keep it simple. We were also told that even though our project is not using viruses, it would be good to have an example of viruses being used in a positive way when speaking to the public. Overall, this interview was helpful in examining if our system would be safe and what the regulatory landscape is surrounding it.

We spoke with Nicole Kimmel, the aquatic invasive species specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks. She helps to oversee the five components of the aquatic invasive species program: policy and legislation, education and outreach, monitor, inspection, and response. She said that one of the larger threats that they are setting up prevention methods are zebra mussels. Current detection methods that they employ are substrate monitoring in various lakes in the province, tow nets through lakes, and are starting to explore environmental DNA methods. For prevention, the province is using boat inspection stations and have done studies on using potash (potassium chloride) as a treatment though is still in the process of being registered as a treatment with the federal government of Canada. When asked if they had heard about Zequanox, she said that they have, but it is too cost prohibitive for Alberta to use. She suggested that we consider the advantages and disadvantages of our project with these methods. For our project, she said that we would need to ensure that our PNCs with the toxin would be stable within the water. With this type of project, you need to be conscious of the users of waterways and where the water is distributed. Overall, this interview was helpful in learning more about how the province is currently handling this problem and that our system would need to be safe to ensure no unintended effects would occur.

We spoke with Shannon Frank, the Executive Director of the Oldman Watershed Council, a local not-for-profit group that works on finding solutions to environmental issues in Southern Alberta. The group has 8 goals and their main focuses are currently enhancing the commitment of the community to taking care of the watershed, to restore headwaters, and to educate recreationists about their impact on the watershed. One of their goals they plan on working on in the future is to prevent and control invasive species. Shannon mentioned that one of the invasive species that is current threat to Alberta waterways is zebra mussels. Current prevention methods include educating the public and boat inspection stations. A potash treatment is also being investigated as a viable treatment option. We are the first biotechnology project that has approached the Oldman Watershed Council. Shannon said that for our project the main considerations would be that it is specific for zebra mussels and would not harm native species and also what the long-term effects would be on the ecosystem. In terms of the implementation of our system, she suggested that it may be more practical for government agencies to implement our system into pipelines. If zebra mussels were to invade Alberta, infestation in city and agriculture pipes would cost millions of dollars to repair this infrastructure. Overall, this interview was helpful in determining what we would need to do to have our system be useful for an environmental application.

We spoke with Ryan Dyck, a research technician in Cereal Agronomy at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, a branch of the Department of Agriculture Agri-Food Canada. Cereal Agronomy conducts research experiments in the field to determine the optimum agronomic methods for producing the highest quality of crop of existing crop varieties the public has access to. Due to the climate in Southern Alberta, the agriculture industry here utilizes 65% of S. Alberta’s total fresh water consumed making this a very important resource for the economy. With over 40 crop varieties supported by the irrigation systems involving 50 reservoirs, any infestation of invasive species or contamination of the water with biological control agents would have a debilitating effect on the industry. If an infestation of zebra mussels colonized any part of the system, the entire network of reservoirs and over 8,000 km of pipelines would be at risk. The value of the irrigation network is estimated to be worth $3.6 billion and the cost to replace the existing infrastructure could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Additionally, the current method of controlling zebra mussels involves dumping KCl into the water supply and the turbidity of the water would have a severe impact on certain sensitive life stages of crop development.

We interviewed Sweta Gupta, a pharmacist and manager of Wal-Mart pharmacies. She said that within Wal-Mart’s repositories, they do dispense biologics and that what is available from their distribution centre is how they choose what is available on their shelves. She suggested that our system would need to have clear stability information and the components of the reaction would need to be indicated to determine if there are any allergens present. Overall, this interview informed us that we would need to ensure our system would have to come in a stable form and identified a potential safety issue.

Based on our interviews, we found that many people would likely have concerns if our system were to be used for one of the applications that we explored, such as using them with zebra mussels or for gene therapies. We decided to design a risk assessment rubric for future iGEM teams and researchers to use if they are considering the use of protein nanocompartments for their project. This rubric was reviewed by Brigitte Cadieux, Jennifer Mihowich, and Melanie Sabourin of the Public Health Agency of Canada and their input was used to revise our initial draft. Check out our rubric here!