Team:Michigan/Human Practices

Michigan:Attributions

Human Practices

Our Human Practice work focused on allowing students of all ages to interact with knowledgeable experts, and discuss topics related to our research, like genetic engineering and CRISPR. As a team, we are excited about the possibilities of synthetic biology, and wanted to ensure that the ethics surrounding CRISPR and gene editing are addressed. We need to recognize the potential for unexpected side-effects and consider the social impact and response of our construct. Through our work, we created unique spaces of dialogue and education between scientists and the public to address these concerns and take into account various actors’ perspectives for our research and future work. We taught bioinformatics to high school students, hosted a panel on the “Ethics of Genetic Engineering” and a science workshop at a children’s science center, where we learned how to approach people of all ages with knowledge on “hot” topics such as CRISPR.

Integrated Human Practices

Meetings with Zhang - Jae/Thomas
During much of the project planning and early stages of wetlab, we collaborated with Dr. Yan Zhang, a core faculty member of the Biological Chemistry department at the University of Michigan. Her research revolving around the investigation of Cas9 proteins and modification of their function, particularly concerning PAM sequences, was crucial to the design of our experiments. For instance, she consulted us in identifying potential ways to assay the binding affinity of Cas9 to a particular target sequence using reporter genes, for instance the suggestion of different fluorescent proteins as screenable markers. Her general knowledge on Cas9 protein function and effectively modifying/assaying their function proved a valuable resource, especially given her willingness to collaborate in face-to-face meetings on a weekly basis and keep in consistent contact through email. Much of her advice also extended to the practical, particularly in recommending resources conducive to the project- for instance in detailing the process of designing and ordering primers/oligonucleotides online; her contribution of a testing plasmid (modified digest sites based from platform pET083) from her lab allowed us to test basic experiments before implementing them into the project, allowing for some preliminary experiments before our parts arrived. This served as an important component from which we could isolate and ligate elsewhere parts that we needed- particularly the Cas9 coding region and its associated moieties. Additionally, Dr. Zhang allowed us to perform basic experiments in her lab in tandem with the iGEM project, which proved an especially useful space to perform primer-induced mutagenesis, restriction enzyme digests, and transformations for the purpose of amplifying plasmid stocks our project demanded.