Contents
Education in CLS/G
We had the opportunity to give assemblies to students across both City of London Boys’, and City of London Girls’ schools. This spanned across all year groups ranging from ages 11-18. The assemblies allowed us to introduce the iGEM competition to younger students so they could have a better understanding of what it involves. We also raised awareness on the issue of tuberculosis across the world, which helped us to introduce our project idea in a simplified manner to show them the potential benefits that an iGEM project can have. One of our key points was to emphasise that iGEM can be a lot more than just Biology and Chemistry, and that students with different interests such as economics and philosophy can also contribute and really enjoy taking part.
Our two schools both publish weekly newspapers, in which we have written multiple articles about iGEM, and our project. The first was a deep dive into our project, including the mechanism of action and explanation of each physical and biological element of the mask. Second, was our project against the wider background of iGEM, explaining principles of synthetic biology and the multidisciplinary way in which the competition thrives. Our collaboration with King’s College London also featured, explaining the advantages of such teamwork through the sharing of facilities, knowledge and experiences to both iGEM teams.
We worked with an organisation called IntoUniversity, educating young children (primary school ages) about genetic engineering in small group classes. Naturally, the result after a handful of lessons was a bombardment of questions and creative ideas from the children that no doubt would make great iGEM participants. A big emphasis for us in these lessons was pointing out the number of routes there are into iGEM and in a more general sense, STEM. This revealed to them the opportunities they may have in the future to spend time involved with STEM subjects whether it be at home, school, or in the more distant future of work. We made online content too, for the wider access of anyone across the world with internet access, to introduce the concept of genetic engineering in a simple way that still ensures a complete understanding of the discipline, where we also highlighted the variety of pathways into STEM.
Podcast
Starting a team podcast was a great opportunity for us to share different aspects of our IGEM project with the broader community. Our podcast series had a total of X episodes covering a broad range of topics from discussion of the importance of inclusivity and diversity in STEM to a detailed explanation of the biology of our aLFA REMASK. Team members worked in pairs or threes to make the episode content and film their podcast episodes. The opportunity to engage with the broader community through the podcast, rather than traditional written content, allowed our team to build a stronger connection with other IGEM teams, professionals, and our school community.
Attributions
Among our Human Practices team, outreach has been a fundamental aspect of our project journey. Being able to talk and engage with professionals of their field has allowed for the integration of a multitude of synthetic biological techniques in order to create the most sustainable and effective diagnostic tool. Outreach has played an immensely important role in our research and how we could logistically implement our project into society. Speaking with consultants, physicians and researchers has allowed for us to understand where in the world we could best promote our project and why it would be able to replace other diagnostic tools. We have been able to build our knowledge in synthetic biology through outreach and collectively move through the process of our design cycle.
Through our design cycle we have omitted and introduced different synthetic biological tools in order to be the most cost effective, sustainable and realistic in our approach towards creating a wearable diagnostic tool. By talking with these professionals allowed for the approach towards integrated human practices and bettering our project.
Chris Witty:
Professor Chris Witty is the Chief Medical Officer for England and the UK’s Chief Medical Adviser. He is the representative for the UK on the Executive Board of the World Health Organisation. He is a consultant at the University College London Hospital and at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Most importantly for us, he is an epidemiologist and has curated research from working as a doctor in the UK, Africa and Asia. He previously had the position of being the Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which again is very relevant for our project.
After having spoken with Professor Chris Witty, we learnt from him that ‘the spread of disease through hospitals and via healthcare workers is one of the three causes of transmission and prevalence of disease’. This gave us more of an inclination to how to best implement our project to society and also what the problems were in modern healthcare that made our project most useful. He also validated our idea for the project completely, and told us numerous times how our concept would aim and most likely succeed in reducing infection rates. We also spoke to him about the specifics behind our project; the constant testing for TB in patients in order to manage control the spread of the infection. He told us that it is absolutely vital for us to do and is the ‘first and best’ thing to do. Accumulating this validation has helped us to further improve our project and implement much of the feedback we have received.
Kim Payne:
Kim Payne is a teaching associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh for the department of biological sciences. She has a research background in Molecular Biology and Virology and with specific experience in studying mycobacteriophages and Herpes Simplex Virus type 1.
After talking with Kim Payne we were given feedback about the use of the enzymes within our mask. She gave us insight about the processes necessary for lysis via enzymes and how this could be possible through different synthetic biological methods. However, this led us to the decision of not using enzymes. This decision shows and emulates a perfect example of integrated human practices where we accounted for guidance given by an external source, in this case being a researcher in the field of molecular biology.
Dr Simon Tiberi:
Dr Simon Tiberi is an honorary consultant physician in infectious diseases at Barts Health NHS Trust and at Queen Mary University of London. He works in Infections and Tuberculosis clinics in East London Hospitals and is also TB secretary for the European Respiratory Society. Much of his research is focused on mycobacteria, respiratory infections and antimicrobials, and he is involved in many clinical trials, translational and health service research.
Having spoken to Dr Tiberi we were able to understand the expanse of Tuberculosis across the United Kingdom. He enlightened us with the knowledge that not only was Tuberculosis common and prevalent in developing countries but also a very prominent and serious issue in England. In 2020, 4,125 individuals were diagnosed with Tuberculosis in England, and around a rate of 7.3 for every 100,000 people. Once we had assimilated this information we were yet to realise how vital this was for us to pursue within our project.
Dr Peter Nguyen:
Dr Peter Nguyen currently works on programmable probiotics and freeze-dried cell-free manufacturing technology at the Wyss Institute. He also researched engineering systems for the self-assembly and control of nanoscale structures which include protein engineering for synthetic biology. He is in the process of creating and developing wearable diagnostics through synthetic biology and the use of freeze-dried biological circuits.
Dr Nguyen had already researched and came up with the idea of a wearable diagnostic tool - a mask, that would be able to detect and diagnose viral infections. This was the idea that sparked our focal interest in a wearable diagnostic method and we decided to then implement this into another realm of healthcare and diagnosis which we chose as Tuberculosis. From Dr Nguyen’s idea we changed and evolved his design to fit our goals and aims for how the mask would operate. We created a new thermal lysis system and RPA system. Dr Nguyen however, has helped us tremendously in the process of our design cycle; through the development of the lateral flow test strip, how we would cut and arrange it, and how we would be able to assemble the parts of the mask. His input and advisory skills have pushed our project to where it is and this would be seen as an example of integrated human practices. We wholeheartedly reflected on the feedback we received and this overall helped us to better understand the parts of our project we needed to improve. As a previous iGEM participant himself we valued his input greatly.
Oliver Stringer:
Oliver Stringer is a postgraduate researcher for the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London. His research includes human and veterinary based pathogens with a core focus on diagnostic methods. He also has experience of working with traditional PCR and isothermal amplification techniques.
We were given feedback from Oliver Stringer that enabled us to understand the benefits and weaknesses of working with and using RPA in our mask. His knowledge on designing RPA probes were of great benefit to us and helped us to decipher the methods and techniques in which we would want to go about this. He applauded us with great commendation about our ability to work with RPA at low temperatures which made it fast and simplistic.
Dr David Rueda:
Dr David Rueda is currently the Chair in Molecular and Cellular Biophysics within the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London. His research consists of developing and applying single molecule approaches to understand the mechanisms by which protein and nucleic acids regulate cellular functions such as DNA replication and repair.
Through speaking with Dr Rueda, he helped us learn about the importance of CRISPR in our mask as a synthetic biological component. He helped us understand the benefits and challenges towards using CRISPR and how we could implement an efficient approach within our mask. He validated the fact that we were going to be using this method of CRISPR, and so this was very much taken on board as an important aspect to factor in completely for the mask.
Seda Yerlikaya:
Seda Yerlikaya works with the Tuberculosis foundation and also works with the Find Diagnosis for all foundation where they interconnect countries, healthcare facilities and funding to aid with diagnosis for diseases around the world. They try to improve healthcare systems and implement sustainability where possible in terms of cost and realism.
We managed to get into contact with Seda Yerlikaya very early on in our design cycle where we first came up with our idea for the mask. She was able to give us an insight into how prevalent and the disease of tuberculosis was and how much money were spent on tests for diagnosis. This highlighted to us that we massively needed to tackle this and make an impact on the diagnostic tools and methods available. We also learnt about the lack of knowledge about Tuberculosis as a disease to the public and the world in general. We decided to act on this to improve the education on Tuberculosis in our wider society, which we deem as exceptionally important for us to be aware about the implications of this disease.
Professor Andrew Martin:
Professor Andrew Martin is a Professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and UCL. He takes particular interest in the sequence, structure and function of antibodies and also the impact of mutations on protein structure and function. He has also acted as a consultant to many pharmaceutical companies and teaches about protein energetics, protein folding and antibody structure.
When we had spoken to Professor Andrew Martin at the very beginning of our design cycle, he aided us in understanding the potential for using custom made proteins which would allow us to detect tuberculosis or a multitude of other diseases. However, after learning about the synthetic biological processes and techniques our project would have to undergo, we came to the conclusion that this would not be possible for us to. This being a prime example of integrated human practice where we took on the advice from Professor Andrew Martin about custom made proteins and our limited ability to be able to pursue this.