Team:British Columbia/Human Practices

This year, the theme of our Human Practices endeavors was Altering public perception of genetic engineering. In addition to acquiring input from established academics and leaders in industry regarding the laboratory component of the project, we decided to write an investigative journalism piece on the attitudes people have towards science, and host workshops for high school students by partnering with Geering Up, a local non-profit organization. To best convey what we gained from our interviews, we adapted and used the AREA framework as described by the University of Exeter:

ANTICIPATE: What we hoped to gain from the interview

REFLECT: How information from the interview can be applied to our project

ENGAGE: Overview of what was discussed during the interview

ACT: Our next steps that were influenced by the interview

KENT CHEN

Masters student working with Bally Lab on the relationships between flavonoids and cancer growth.

A: When meeting with Kent we anticipated to receive advice about troubleshooting our project and building on what Dr. Yadav mentioned to us. We provided the graduate student with our previous work and researched his background which was working with flavonoids and using it for cancer research. Thus, we were anticipating to receive a great sum of knowledge on perfecting our project.
R: The meeting was informative and positive though not necessarily helpful directly to troubleshoot. However, in the Human Practices team, it was deemed very helpful because we learned a lot about other aspects the project could pertain to.
E: Kent Chen explained to us that flavonoids are a natural product industry, is anti-inflammatory and has varying amount of hydroxyl group thus affecting its efficacy of producing its function fully. He gave us advice on understanding the process of turning a compound into a marketable drug as we could test in tissue culture against cell line and see if it is potent then proceed do it in-vivo and put it in clinical trial. Additionally, we were informed more about flavonoids and how usually when produced industrially it is from plant extracts. We were also given basic information about the anti-inflammatory molecule of flavonoids itself and how adding liposomes help make the drug more ingestible. As well, Kent Chen told us about how E. coli can export and uptake flavonoids like naringenin so we are able to understand this background process.
A: We will be meeting with Dr Huxham of UILO (University-Industry Liaison Office) to discuss various routes for industrial application. We will contact certain industrial companies such as Virogen and ESSA (a biotechnology company that works on the development of small molecule drugs for cancer treatment)

DR. VIKRAMADITYA YADAV

UBC professor and founder of research group BioFoundry - creates biosynthetic enzymes using metabolic pathways.

A: What we anticipated from this interview was to speak with Dr. Yadav about our research project of creating a microbial co-culture and receive some advice on if there is anything in the project that may not work as planned and if there is something we are able to do to recuperate that. We were also anticipating certain aspects of our project such as our biosensor to not function as we have had certain trouble understanding how the biosensor would function.
R: Meeting with Dr. Yadav allowed us to reflect on our project as there were aspects that inherently E. coli has that might not work when we try to genetic manipulate them to work for our project. This meeting was very positive and knowledgeable. We walked out feeling inspired and very motivated to continue working troubleshooting.
E: Dr Yadav told us that we are able to us his HPLC (high-performance light chromatography) machine to quantify our product of Kaempferol. Additionally, he gave us advice on patenting and how we would proceed if we were to patent this optimizing production co-culture. Furthermore, Dr. Yadav reminded us that we need to compare rates of our first and second strain as if the two strains don’t grow at the same rate that means there is a lot of heavy hydroxation machinery and there would be a lag with the production for which we need an inhibitor (Gp2) to increase the rate of the resultant. If the rates were equal we wouldn’t need an additional factor. Also, we were told to find the dissociation constant as we want high kb to have enough naringenin production. As well, we would need to test out if naringenin, FdeR and GfP system is robust as well as if Gp2 can effectively inhibit bacterial growth. Over engineering our strain → biosensor team.
A: We have now contacted Dr. Bohlmann and Dr. Rosado to meet with them to ask more questions about our project. We are also meeting with a graduate student of Dr. Bally, Kent, tomorrow at the Cancer Agency.

YANAL MURAD

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JAMES VOGL

the editor of the science section of the Ubyssey. B.A. student, interests in political science and economics.

A: When going into the interview the UBC iGEM team anticipated that we would receive information about how we approach making our own journalism piece for our iGEM project and any tips and tricks from a science journalist who has varying experiences in curating a piece through interviews, e-mails, and parsing through appropriate research articles. We were also wanting him to provide us information about how to interview other individuals in the science field and how we would accurately and precisely receive the information we need through an interview and efficiently conduct several when writing our journal piece.
R: Interview James was extremely insightful as he provided several pieces of advice on creating an article. This interview allowed us to pause and understand where the navigation of our journal article was going to. As he emphasized public interest, our main reflection from this interview was the aspect of enticing the public in terms of our hook and our title. This interview served as a fundamental step in producing a journal article about our iGEM project.
E: Throughout our interview we were given tips to alter our approach of journalism. Firstly, he introduced a new method of writing which is called “Front Loading”. Front Loading is using exciting and important information in the introduction of the article and allowing information that does not directly pertain to the article at the conclusion. Essentially he described it as writing an article with the hope that readers read until the end, but the expectation that readers will not. Therefore, we were amazed to learn that articles incorporate marketing tactics to serve the information to the appropriate readers. Additionally, James informed us about how to appropriately approach contacting individuals within a scientific field in hopes of writing an article about them. He mentioned several probing questions if the conversation is stagnant and how to direct it if the conversation is going on a tangent. This was extremely informative to us because before this interview, when conducting interviews there were patches in the interview that were uncomfortable and/or hard to overcome. Thus, the few pointers he provided us was definitely appreciated.
A: We will use the advice James Vogl provided us and use that when constructing our journalism piece. Additionally, we are able to transfer this knowledge to the next year iGEM teams if they want to curate a an article outlining their project. Finally, when writing our wiki this serves as a great stepping stone as we are able to apply certain writing tips James shared with us to the wiki page.

DR. KATHERINE WHITE

UBC professor at Sauder School of Business, Marketing and Behavioural Science Division

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DR. STEVEN HEINE

UBC Psychology professor who studies people's attitudes towards science and with some focus on genetics

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