As part of our Human practices we decided to communicate with potential stakeholders if our system were to be deployed into the real world. Most communication was either via email or at our outreach events.

Via our survey we asked the public what their views and opinions of genetic modification were, and found a surprisingly positive result overall, though a large proportion of respondents were either under 20 years old or had a scientific education.

However, even at our the 3G conference outreach event, aimed at retirees, and at the talk given to a Welsh Sixth Form, there was still an overwhelming majority that supported genetic modification of crops. We found that a very common concern was the risk of off-target effects. One lady at the 3G event, Miriam Knight, informed us of a previously unknown interaction between wasps, aphids, and honeybees. This concern caused us to look into the potential off-target effects of our project on honeybees and other non-target organisms, including aphid predators that may come in contact with our siRNAs. We communicated with the Welsh Bee Keepers Association (WBKA) to get more details about the interactions between aphids and honeybees, and found that the honeybees actually eat the honeydew that aphids secrete from the plants. This meant that the honeybees could be eating small amounts of our siRNAs that were also secreted from the aphids that feed on our modified crops. To address the concerns raised by the public and the WBKA, we decided to bioinformatically analyse the potential toxicity of our siRNAs on any organism that would likely come in contact with our siRNAs, including aphid predators, honeybees, and humans who would eat the crops. Where possible, we analysed the transcriptomes of organisms as only the transcribed regions of the genomes are at risk from siRNA targetting. This was only possible for humans and honeybees, but we found there was no risk to either. There were small numbers of hits against the genomic sequences of the aphid predators, but there is a strong likelihood that the regions in which our siRNAs have homology are not transcribed. Nevertheless, we cannot rule this out until better genome annotation is released on these organisms, and so have to assume that aphid predators might be at risk.

We then communicated to an Agronomist, John Harrington, who works alongside Bayer and NIAB, and met up with him. He discussed the potential usefulness of our project, deciding that the project would definitely be favourable relative to standard methods of control, which naturally harm non-target organisms anyway. John called a friend from NIAB to ask what proportion of crops are treated with aphid insecticides each year, in which the response was around 90-95% of crop area.

Finally, we decided to contact the Welsh Environment minister, Hannah Blythyn, to discuss how our project and genetic modification of crops would be viewed politically. We aim to meet with a representative to discuss this in November.

• Communication with stakeholders made us question the feasibility of our project, but most importantly the potential impacts
• Looked into cost and feasibility relative to current methods. Also looked into the public opinions on GM crops.
• Performed bioinformatics (link page) to assess the toxicity to humans, aphid predators, and highly valued species such as honeybees.