Team:Bielefeld-CeBiTec/Human Practices

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Integrated Human Practices

Dual Use and Dual Use Research of Concern in the Context of iGEM

When participating in the iGEM competition it is necessary to deal with the issues Dual Use and Dual Use Research of Concern or in this case Biosecurity. iGEM has the potential of being a role model providing education and raise awareness for Biosecurity concerns and the minimization of its risks. iGEM is the biggest competition of young scientists in synthetic biology worldwide and therefore its coverage is enormous. In addition, all results are open source. Consequently everybody with an access to the web can get all information about every project. Due to this enormous coverage and the fact that all results will be published it is important that all participants are aware of the terms Dual Use and Dual Use Research of Concern. Most attendees, including ourselves, were uninformed about Biosecurity when starting their research and heard about this topic the first time when they have already started their project. We think this is way too late.
Our motivation to deal with Dual Use and Dual Use Research of Concern started with our own project. The uptake of metal ions by microorganisms is an essential part of our project. That is why we thought about working with Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, an organism that is used in the industrial process of bioleaching of copper ores. We wanted to optimize this process in Escherichia coli so that we could reuse old metals like copper in old electronics from dumping grounds. It would be very useful but the E. coli strains we wanted to create could also be used to destroy currently in usage electronics and machines and therefore could be misused. For this reason, we already had to think about the impact our project could have besides the primary goal of digesting elemental metals from electronic waste and the way we would publish it. But what if there are scientists publishing such results without reflecting whether they can be misused by others? This might not happen out of bad intention as dual use potential is not always obvious at first glance.
In Germany there are no regulations and controls concerning the content of publications. For this reason it is important to promote a sense of responsibility from the very beginning of the scientific education. If everybody is enlightened and has developed a sense of responsibility, excessive regulation as a result of carelessness can be avoided in the future. This issue is very important for protecting the society as well as the public trust we as scientists and scientific institutions rely upon.
2014, the decision was made that until 2017 every research institution in Germany must have a committee for questions about bioethics, Dual Use and Dual Use Research of Concern. Consequently there is also a new committee at our university. We want to support this new committee and give some input how students and other members of universities could be enlightened about this topic. For this reason we interviewed established researchers from different fields of science at our university and tried to find out how the current situation looks like and whether we could participate in the discussion. Additionally we initiated a nationwide survey in the period from June 21st to July 10th about the level of knowledge about the topics Dual Use, Dual Use Research of Concern and the enlightenment at universities in which scientists from different German universities participated. The results clearly show that the clarification status of German scientists as well as the enlightenment at universities on these topics is not sufficient.
On 11 July we organized a lecture evening followed by a panel discussion on the subject „Where does free science end? – Chances and risks of the self-regulation in research“ in cooperation with the student initiative biotechnologische Studenteninitiative (btS) e.V. Bielefeld. We invited the speakers Prof. Dr. Alfons Bora (Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University), Prof. Dr. Kathrynn Nixdorff (Leopoldina, University of Darmstadt) and Tom Hobson (Bath University). That evening we also gave a talk on the topic „Biosecurity in the Context of iGEM" and presented the results of our nationwide survey.
You can see the whole speech here:
To get an international outlook on the level of knowledge and to make comparisons between different countries, there is currently a new, international version of the survey in progress since July 18. We would be very happy if as many of you as possible would participate! With the evaluated data next steps to realize our plans could be achieved.

RAG

Searching for a possible source of metal ions we contacted the Ruhrkohle AG (RAG) which is Germany's biggest coal mining corporation. The RAG is responsible for taking care of all the coal mines which are either closed already or are closing up in the coming years and who stretch over great areas underneath the state of North Rhine Westphalia and the Saarland. One of the major tasks of the RAG is to pump up groundwater which seeps through different layers of rock and floods the coal mines. This water is getting contaminated with heavy metals and becomes a danger for the water supply if it doesn’t get pumped up before it rises up into the groundwater bearing layers. The water has a temperature of around 20°C and gets pumped into nearby rivers without further processing.
Figure 1: Team members visit experts at the coal mine in Prosper-Haniel, NRW, Germany from left to right Christoph Geske, Levin Joe Klages and Johannes Ruhnau.
Because information about the exact water composition is not easily accessible we contacted Dr. Michael Drobniewski who is the Director of Operation of the Mine Water Management Division at the RAG. He gave us valuable information about the water composition and invited us for a meeting.
Figure 2: Meeting with Dr. Michael Drobniewski, director of operations of the ‘Mine Water Management Division’ in the ‘Technical and Logistics Services Division’ at the RAG AG.
In our meeting we learned that the levels of copper in the water are much lower than we expected from our own research and do not exceed any legal thresholds at the moment but this might change in the future when government thresholds get more restrictive. Other metals like iron where present in levels suitable for our purposes of metal uptake and nanoparticle formation. Equipped with this knowledge and the offer of the RAG to supply us with water samples from iron contaminated sources we decided to dive deeper into the science of iron nanoparticle formation with the goal of developing novel materials with the added benefit of cleaning contaminated water sources found in our area.

NASA

At NASA scientists also think about the possibilities to use bacteria for biological remediation of metals. One of those scientists is Benjamin Lehner who works on the uptake of iron from moon and mars rock.
Figure 3: Skype call with Benjamin Lehner, PhD Exchange Candidate at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, Silicon Valley.
We talked to him about our project idea, possible bottlenecks and how NASA and iGEM work together. Thanks to his great insights we learned that the uptake of iron ions in high amounts by bacteria is possible and that printing with iron in space is currently a field NASA is working on. He explained to us, that iron can be used in the construction of conducting structures when used in an air free atmosphere for example on the moon. This changed our assumptions on which metals can be used for printing conducting structures and we decided to add iron to the list of metal ions we could use for our printing applications. His encouraging remarks about the possibility to import very high amounts of iron ions into cells gave us the confidence to further pursue our work in the direction of iron uptake with the help of modified ferritin. By also focusing on iron uptake we add another important metal to the list of materials which can be found in elevated levels in pit water all over Germany.
Mr. Lehner also encouraged us to continue our work on copper uptake because to his knowledge 20% of the global copper mined and recycling is already done with the help of bacteria and it’s an essential metal required in many industrial applications.
He also recommended us to get in contact with the iGEM team Stanford-Brown which is currently working on producing cellulose in bacteria. The idea to cooperate with the Stanford-Brown iGEM team by printing metal structures on their cellulose came up and so we contacted them asking them if they are interested in cooperating with us.