Difference between revisions of "Team:DTU-Denmark/Human Practices"

 
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<div class="headlinecontainer" style="font-size:5vw;"><h1>Human Practices</h1></div>
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<h1>Human Practices</h1>
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Our team has put a lot of effort into utilizing many different avenues for communicating who we are and what we are doing. Not just have we done multiple educational activities, such as starting the first <a  target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Public_Engagement#eduCHSSP">Danish high school iGEM team</a>, giving talks for <a  target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Public_Engagement#eduelementary">9th graders</a> and advocate for iGEM at a competition for aspiring young students in <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Public_Engagement#eduscienceinforum">natural sciences</a>, all of which has a seperate web-page. We have also done a collaboration with the universities of <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:UCopenhagen">Copenhagen</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:Exeter">Exeter</a> to compose a <a href="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/b/b9/T--DTU-Denmark--colonizing-mars.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> on the history, ethics and public discourse surrounding Mars colonization.
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Furthermore, we hosted a 3-day workshop, the <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/BioBrickTutorial">Biobrick tutorial</a>, for more than 80 igem participants from Scandinavian iGEM teams, where performing assembly experiments and exploring the broader possibilities of participating in iGEM were in forefront.
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Directly related to our project,  we have spoken with both the industry experts, such as <a href="#humanpracecovative">Ecovative</a> and <a href="#humanpracnovozymes">Novozymes</a>, and experts from <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Attributions">academia</a>, who have helped shape our ideas and provided valuable feedback to our project. We have also met with another <a href="#humanprachyphaebox">fungal biomaterial project</a> here at DTU to discuss their experiences with growing fungus and how we potentially can help each other moving forward.
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Finally, we have worked on reaching out to the broader public be attending a competition in <a  href="#humanpracgreenchallenge">sustainable energies</a>, doing <a  href="#humanpracsnapchat">SnapChat takeovers</a> and being showcasing our project during the <a href="#humanprackulturnat">annual cultural night in Copenhagen</a>.
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<h2 class="media-heading"  style="text-align: right;margin-bottom: 35px; color:#F8A05B;">Integrated Human Practices</h2>
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To elucidate which direction our project could take, we spoke with experts from both industry and academia. From them, we have gained valuable information on how to conduct our experiments and what to look for.
 
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At iGEM we believe societal considerations should be upfront and integrated throughout the design and execution of synthetic biology projects. “Human Practices” refers to iGEM teams’ efforts to actively consider how the world affects their work and the work affects the world. Through your Human Practices activities, your team should demonstrate how you have thought carefully and creatively about whether your project is responsible and good for the world. We invite you to explore issues relating (but not limited) to the ethics, safety, security, and sustainability of your project, and to show how this exploration feeds back into your project purpose, design and execution.
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<h3>Meeting with Novozymes</h3>
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<p style="text-align:justify">Early in our project we met with Mikako Sasa and Sara Landwik from Novozymes, the world's largest producer of industrial enzymes (in which a high number originates from fungi), to consult experts from the industry. Their advice was to work with either <i>Aspergillus</i>, <i>Schizophyllum</i> or <i>Fusarium</i>. At DTU we already had <i>Aspergillus</i> strains, and we acquired a <i>Schizophyllum</i> strain from Hans Wösten. In addition to knowledge of fungal strains, they shared some ideas on which features could be interesting to engineer. For engineering the material properties of the structure, they suggested changing the branching patterns of beta-glucan in order to achieve stronger cell walls or changing the acetylation of chitin. These are some of the points we are interested in pursuing next.<br>
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Lastly, they gave us advice on how to grow these filamentous fungi and how to easily transfer the fungi from liquid medium to the solid substrates, which was put to <a target=_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Notebook">use in mycolab<a/>.<br><br>
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<p style="text-align:justify">Hyphaebox is a startup from DTU that produces packaging materials from mycotecture. They shared their expertise in growing mycotecture, including which substrates, temperatures, and ambient moisture are best suited for producing high-quality mycomaterials. <br>
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As they are a startup that focuses on design, they are interested in knowing more of the technical aspects of the materials. Therefore, they asked us to look into the effects of growth on different substrates and material properties of the products. In addition, they are interested in data from other types of fungi. They used shiitake (<i>Lentinula edodes</i>) for their materials and are interested in what other fungal species could be useful for the production of materials. <br><br>
 
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<h3>Ecovative</h3>
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In our talks with Ecovative Design, the subject of the physical appearances of the products and how to integrate it was discussed. One physical appearance could be a change to the color of the mycelium, which we decided to solve by integrating sequences for chromoproteins or pigments into the fungal genome. We established two methods to solve this: In the first one we assembled a <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Results-melA">melanin producing cassette</a> that results in darkening the mycelium.  The other method involves a <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Results-amilCP">chromoprotein cassette</a>, which is a blue protein that makes the mycelium greener. The idea of optimizing the appearance of the fungal products is appealing to a company such as Ecovative Design, as this creates more business targets. <br>
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Another point of interest for Ecovative Design was the idea of strengthening physical properties of the fungus, where we have been investigating if it is possible to control either the branching pattern or the cell wall thickness of the fungus.  Through our research, we found the gene <i>gfA</i>, which synthesizes the limiting metabolite in the chitin pathway (1). In addition to these genes, we have <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/GrowthModelling">modelled the growth</a> of the fungal mycelium and its branching patterns.<br><br>
  
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In parallel to working with the genetics of the fungal engineering, we also tackled the process of protoplasting and transforming filamentous fungi. Ecovative Design shared their protoplasting <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Experiments#ganodermaprotocol
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">protocol</a> with us and we got to work on implementing the protocol. <br>
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During our experimentation, we tried to optimize the protocol by substituting an expensive reagent, driselase, with a more affordable one. We used higher concentrations of Glucanex than originally and different digestion times instead of following the protocol with their digestion times and concentration of driselase. It was originally speculated that only Glucanex could be used, increasing the profitability of Ecovative Design. However, further research is needed as we did not successfully produce any protoplasts in any of the tries.
  
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<p>For more information, please see the <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Human_Practices">Human Practices Hub</a>. There you will find:</p>
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<li> an <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Human_Practices/Introduction">introduction</a> to Human Practices at iGEM </li>
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<li>tips on <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Human_Practices/How_to_Succeed">how to succeed</a> including explanations of judging criteria and advice about how to conduct and document your Human Practices work</li>
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<li>descriptions of <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Human_Practices/Examples">exemplary work</a> to inspire you</li>
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<li>links to helpful <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Human_Practices/Resources">resources</a></li>
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<li>And more! </li>
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<p>On this page, your team should document all of your Human Practices work and activities. You should write about the Human Practices topics you considered in your project, document any activities you conducted to explore these topics (such as engaging with experts and stakeholders), describe why you took a particular approach (including referencing any work you built upon), and explain if and how you integrated takeaways from your Human Practices work back into your project purpose, design and/or execution. </p>
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<p>If your team has gone above and beyond in work related to safety, then you should document this work on your Safety wiki page and provide a description and link on this page. If your team has developed education and public engagement efforts that go beyond a focus on your particular project, and for which would like to nominate your team for the Best Education and Public Engagement Special Prize, you should document this work on your Education and Education wiki page and provide a description and link here. </p>
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The Green Challenge is an annual challenge at DTU in which students can enter with either a startup or a project. We entered with our iGEM project to take advantage of the hundreds of experts ranging from researchers to politicians in multiple subjects. As we were still in the early process of our project, we knew that we would gain most by keeping it simple and let the experts ask us questions to learn more about aspects in which we had not really thought about yet. Therefore, we only presented ourselves as ‘Mycomaterials’. There was encouragement from most and one of the winnings projects of the event was also regarding mycelium products for common use.
  
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<p>The iGEM judges will review this page to assess whether you have met the Silver and/or Gold medal requirements based on the Integrated Human Practices criteria listed below. If you nominate your team for the <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Judging/Awards">Best Integrated Human Practices Special Prize</a> by filling out the corresponding field in the <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Judging/Judging_Form">judging form</a>, the judges will also review this page to consider your team for that prize.
 
 
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We were lucky enough to be offered to take over the DTU SnapChat account for one of the three days of the BioBrick Tutorial. Our vision in doing so was to primarily let the roughly 11,000 other DTU students get an inside view of what being a member of the DTU Biobuilders means. The takeover happened before we had settled on a project, so the main focus was showing the event and bringing the audience along in the activities that took place during the tutorial. On Saturday during the iGEM Giant Jamboree, we will again take over the SnapChat account and document our time in Boston - this time going a bit more in-depth in communicating our project to the world. Anyone interested can follow us on the official DTU Snapchat: <b>dtudk</b>.
  
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<p>Convince the judges you have thought carefully and creatively about whether your work is responsible and good for the world. Document how you have investigated these issues and engaged with your relevant communities, why you chose this approach, and what you have learned. Please note that surveys will not fulfill this criteria unless you follow scientifically valid methods. </p>
 
  
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<h3>Gold Medal Criterion #1</h3>
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<p>Expand on your silver medal activity by demonstrating how you have integrated the investigated issues into the purpose, design and/or execution of your project. Document how your project has changed based upon your human practices work.
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'Københavns Kulturnat’ is an annual event held all over Copenhagen. It gathers people and allows them to experience many of the things that Copenhagen has to offer. Our team was lucky enough to be offered to participate at the Tycho Brahe Planetarium along with the UCPH team with whom we had at that point collaborated to write a <a target="_blank" href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:DTU-Denmark/Collaborations#collabKU">report on Mars colonization</a>.
  
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<h5 align="justify"> You can read the report <a href="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/b/b9/T--DTU-Denmark--colonizing-mars.pdf" target="_blank">here.</a></h5>
  
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<p style="text-align:justify;"> Our two teams decided to extend our collaboration while still representing our individual teams’ projects at the event. For example, we brought samples of our building material for display, engaged the younger audience by letting them create their “Mars habitat” (by shaping buildings out of clay) while we encouraged the remaining visitors to let us know their opinions on some of the issues that we have discussed in our collaboration report. We had set up a questionnaire with only “yes”, “no”, and “don’t know” options to five questions on Mars colonization related to the report. The difficulty of answering a question so briefly really allowed us to talk to the visitors about the issues as much as possible. The answers to the questionnaires can be found as pie charts.<br><br>
  
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<p>How does your project affect society and how does society influence the direction of your project? How might ethical considerations and stakeholder input guide your project purpose and design and the experiments you conduct in the lab? How does this feedback enter into the process of your work all through the iGEM competition? Document a thoughtful and creative approach to exploring these questions and how your project evolved in the process to compete for this award!</p>
 
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<p>You must also delete the message box on the top of this page to be eligible for this prize.</p>
 
  
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We found that people were generally for going to Mars, but as our conversations revealed, there was a lot more nuance to the subject. Something that came up a lot was the argumentation of traveling to Mars. Many of the arguments presented in the second part of the report were echoed by the visitors, especially whether we could justify spending our resources on colonizing Mars instead of fixing the problems at home. There were many different takes on this dilemma, which suggests it is a valuable issue to continue working on, especially elucidate the finer nuances. The overall question of “Should humanity colonize Mars” worked as a visual poll that could be followed throughout the night with only “yes” and “no” as possible answers. This had about twice as many respondents compared to the questionnaire:
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Along with our project work, we have tried to answer the question of “what does it mean to be a part of the DTU Biobuilders?”. We found that we struggled with knowing what exactly our commitment would entail when we first began. So we decided to solve that problem by interviewing the individual subgroups in the hopes that future members will have that overall understanding from the get-go. Creating videos for the YouTube channel has been a project that we have run alongside our iGem project as it fit the subgroups that were interviewed. Finally, we have ended up with four videos that portray the most prominent subgroups (dry-, synth-, and wetlab) and a general video that explains the project as a whole with emphasis on the timeline from the beginning of the project until the end in October. Using YouTube-videos as a way of communicating has the advantage that it will continue to be easily accessible for the next generations of iGEM’ers even after the 2018 Jamboree. This also means that the videos will be used as of next year when the new DTU iGEM-team is formed.
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<p style="color:#000; font-size:14px;">(1)  Qiu Z, Wu X, Gao W, Zhang J, Huang C. 2018. High temperature induced disruption of the cell wall integrity and structure in Pleurotus ostreatus mycelia. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 102:6627–6636.
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Latest revision as of 03:04, 18 October 2018

Human Practices

Our team has put a lot of effort into utilizing many different avenues for communicating who we are and what we are doing. Not just have we done multiple educational activities, such as starting the first Danish high school iGEM team, giving talks for 9th graders and advocate for iGEM at a competition for aspiring young students in natural sciences, all of which has a seperate web-page. We have also done a collaboration with the universities of Copenhagen and Exeter to compose a report on the history, ethics and public discourse surrounding Mars colonization. Furthermore, we hosted a 3-day workshop, the Biobrick tutorial, for more than 80 igem participants from Scandinavian iGEM teams, where performing assembly experiments and exploring the broader possibilities of participating in iGEM were in forefront.

Directly related to our project, we have spoken with both the industry experts, such as Ecovative and Novozymes, and experts from academia, who have helped shape our ideas and provided valuable feedback to our project. We have also met with another fungal biomaterial project here at DTU to discuss their experiences with growing fungus and how we potentially can help each other moving forward.

Finally, we have worked on reaching out to the broader public be attending a competition in sustainable energies, doing SnapChat takeovers and being showcasing our project during the annual cultural night in Copenhagen.

Integrated Human Practices

To elucidate which direction our project could take, we spoke with experts from both industry and academia. From them, we have gained valuable information on how to conduct our experiments and what to look for.

Meeting with Novozymes

Early in our project we met with Mikako Sasa and Sara Landwik from Novozymes, the world's largest producer of industrial enzymes (in which a high number originates from fungi), to consult experts from the industry. Their advice was to work with either Aspergillus, Schizophyllum or Fusarium. At DTU we already had Aspergillus strains, and we acquired a Schizophyllum strain from Hans Wösten. In addition to knowledge of fungal strains, they shared some ideas on which features could be interesting to engineer. For engineering the material properties of the structure, they suggested changing the branching patterns of beta-glucan in order to achieve stronger cell walls or changing the acetylation of chitin. These are some of the points we are interested in pursuing next.
Lastly, they gave us advice on how to grow these filamentous fungi and how to easily transfer the fungi from liquid medium to the solid substrates, which was put to use in mycolab.

Hyphaebox

Hyphaebox is a startup from DTU that produces packaging materials from mycotecture. They shared their expertise in growing mycotecture, including which substrates, temperatures, and ambient moisture are best suited for producing high-quality mycomaterials.
As they are a startup that focuses on design, they are interested in knowing more of the technical aspects of the materials. Therefore, they asked us to look into the effects of growth on different substrates and material properties of the products. In addition, they are interested in data from other types of fungi. They used shiitake (Lentinula edodes) for their materials and are interested in what other fungal species could be useful for the production of materials.

Ecovative

In our talks with Ecovative Design, the subject of the physical appearances of the products and how to integrate it was discussed. One physical appearance could be a change to the color of the mycelium, which we decided to solve by integrating sequences for chromoproteins or pigments into the fungal genome. We established two methods to solve this: In the first one we assembled a melanin producing cassette that results in darkening the mycelium. The other method involves a chromoprotein cassette, which is a blue protein that makes the mycelium greener. The idea of optimizing the appearance of the fungal products is appealing to a company such as Ecovative Design, as this creates more business targets.
Another point of interest for Ecovative Design was the idea of strengthening physical properties of the fungus, where we have been investigating if it is possible to control either the branching pattern or the cell wall thickness of the fungus. Through our research, we found the gene gfA, which synthesizes the limiting metabolite in the chitin pathway (1). In addition to these genes, we have modelled the growth of the fungal mycelium and its branching patterns.

In parallel to working with the genetics of the fungal engineering, we also tackled the process of protoplasting and transforming filamentous fungi. Ecovative Design shared their protoplasting protocol with us and we got to work on implementing the protocol.
During our experimentation, we tried to optimize the protocol by substituting an expensive reagent, driselase, with a more affordable one. We used higher concentrations of Glucanex than originally and different digestion times instead of following the protocol with their digestion times and concentration of driselase. It was originally speculated that only Glucanex could be used, increasing the profitability of Ecovative Design. However, further research is needed as we did not successfully produce any protoplasts in any of the tries.

Green Challenge

The Green Challenge is an annual challenge at DTU in which students can enter with either a startup or a project. We entered with our iGEM project to take advantage of the hundreds of experts ranging from researchers to politicians in multiple subjects. As we were still in the early process of our project, we knew that we would gain most by keeping it simple and let the experts ask us questions to learn more about aspects in which we had not really thought about yet. Therefore, we only presented ourselves as ‘Mycomaterials’. There was encouragement from most and one of the winnings projects of the event was also regarding mycelium products for common use.

SnapChat takeover

We were lucky enough to be offered to take over the DTU SnapChat account for one of the three days of the BioBrick Tutorial. Our vision in doing so was to primarily let the roughly 11,000 other DTU students get an inside view of what being a member of the DTU Biobuilders means. The takeover happened before we had settled on a project, so the main focus was showing the event and bringing the audience along in the activities that took place during the tutorial. On Saturday during the iGEM Giant Jamboree, we will again take over the SnapChat account and document our time in Boston - this time going a bit more in-depth in communicating our project to the world. Anyone interested can follow us on the official DTU Snapchat: dtudk.

Follow us the 27th of October!

Kulturnatten (Culture Night)

'Københavns Kulturnat’ is an annual event held all over Copenhagen. It gathers people and allows them to experience many of the things that Copenhagen has to offer. Our team was lucky enough to be offered to participate at the Tycho Brahe Planetarium along with the UCPH team with whom we had at that point collaborated to write a report on Mars colonization.

You can read the report here.

Our two teams decided to extend our collaboration while still representing our individual teams’ projects at the event. For example, we brought samples of our building material for display, engaged the younger audience by letting them create their “Mars habitat” (by shaping buildings out of clay) while we encouraged the remaining visitors to let us know their opinions on some of the issues that we have discussed in our collaboration report. We had set up a questionnaire with only “yes”, “no”, and “don’t know” options to five questions on Mars colonization related to the report. The difficulty of answering a question so briefly really allowed us to talk to the visitors about the issues as much as possible. The answers to the questionnaires can be found as pie charts.

We found that people were generally for going to Mars, but as our conversations revealed, there was a lot more nuance to the subject. Something that came up a lot was the argumentation of traveling to Mars. Many of the arguments presented in the second part of the report were echoed by the visitors, especially whether we could justify spending our resources on colonizing Mars instead of fixing the problems at home. There were many different takes on this dilemma, which suggests it is a valuable issue to continue working on, especially elucidate the finer nuances. The overall question of “Should humanity colonize Mars” worked as a visual poll that could be followed throughout the night with only “yes” and “no” as possible answers. This had about twice as many respondents compared to the questionnaire:

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(1) Qiu Z, Wu X, Gao W, Zhang J, Huang C. 2018. High temperature induced disruption of the cell wall integrity and structure in Pleurotus ostreatus mycelia. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 102:6627–6636.