Brainstorming
Can we Improve Nutrient Testing?
Joshua Gay (Newton Farms, Bath)
Joshua described to us the state of soil nutrient testing for arable farmers. Soil companies come to the farm once every 3 to 5 years to survey fields at a cost of £50 to £60 per field. If requested, such tests can accurately measure levels of all relevant minerals, as well as organic matter and drainage. Some soil testing comes as part of a membership or free with product purchases by fertiliser companies, so independent soil testing companies are often relied upon. His sentiment was that generally the price is seen as worth it, but the ability to get more information would not hurt.
Integration
This insight prompted us to reconsider how we implemented PhoBac as a biosensor. If many farmers find the current arrangement with soil testing companies satisfactory, another market would be needed. Considering the national salience of sewage releases and nutrient pollution, we then proposed that PhoBac could be used to empower citizen scientists test phosphate levels in local waters without needing to send samples to a lab, allowing for quick turnaround and reduced costs. See Implementation.
Is phosphate unaffordable for farmers?
Joshua Gay
Joshua explained the pricing of phosphate fertilizers in more detail: prices were up to £800/tonne, with one 600kg bag used per hectare. While it is a high cost to take on each year, he pointed out that phosphate is not a “heavy product” like nitrogen and that yearly application is sometimes unnecessary, with some farmers applying only once every two years. Joshua stressed how more farmers, especially the young, are moving away from imported fertiliser and are trying to use more sustainable and reliable alternatives instead.
Grass and Grain (Arable Farmer, York, The Farming Forum (TFF) User)
“TSP (trisodium phosphate) was just about affordable at £360/t when wheat was £135/t. Now it's, what £900/t, and wheat about £280/t. So it's maybe just about affordable if the wheat yields OK.”
7610 super q (Arable Famer, TFF User)
“No price is too high as long as there's no limit on grain price highs.”
Jellybean (N. Devon, TFF User)
“Haven't used any [phosphate] for the last 3 years and don't plan on any in the future, just farm less intensively and enjoy life.”
DrWazzock (Arable Farmer, Lincolnshire, TFF User)
“I bought no phosphate this year simply because I can’t afford it and the minimum amount of nitrogen I can feasibly use. Next year if fertiliser prices stay high I probably won’t be buying any and will grass most of this farm down into a low intensity sheep unit. Of course nobody sees the food supply crisis coming. They are too busy worrying about a bit of green slime in Poole Harbour.”
Integration
Through these interactions we came to realise while that many arable farmers could afford phosphate fertilizers at increased prices, that is only if the value of the crop rises in proportion. In light of this, we considered phosphate recycling an important problem to pursue as these high prices, even if affordable, increase the economic risk farmers take on given uncertain yields, and increase food prices untenably for the consumer. Furthermore, we came to understand that farmers require phosphate in different amounts based on the prior concentration of soil phosphate. There are clearly, however, those that simply cannot afford the initial investment. Based on Joshua’s comments on the strong demand for sustainable alternatives, we carried out our work with the knowledge that PhoBac was working to meet a real need.
How serious is phosphate pollution?
wanton dwarf (TFF User)
“In this era of 'Environmentalism' and 'Recycling' - how is it that farmers are blamed for using bought fertilser whilst the government, organisations, authorities and corporations make £Billions from treating nutrients as waste and dump it in the sea ? Again, rather than actually dealing with the real problem of bringing the nutrients back onto the farms having been eaten and put through the sewerage system - instead we have regulation and fines. How is that going to make Water companies ACTUALLY fix the problem and recycle ? Why do we continue to get ignorance, avoidance and blame of problems rather than solutions ? The ONLY option is recycling. If you don't recycle then eventually all nutrients end up in the sea. Not a very clever thing to do IMHO as that will mean very little food production.”
Integration
The opinion from this anonymous user, while pointed, highlighted a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo and an urgent need to recycle our limited phosphate resources to protect the environment and secure food production. Hearing the motivating factors behind our project highlighted by this comment affirmed our project was addressing a real problem.
The Farming Forum Survey
We set up two threads on “The Farming Forum” (TFF), collecting responses of anonymous farmers from across the United Kingdom. As farming is a diverse industry, we naturally received a diverse, and even at times conflicting, set of responses. The first thread, titled “Fertilizer Prices: How are you managing?” informally surveyed the perceived impact of recent rises in fertilizer prices. The second, titled “Nutrient Pollution: Who's at fault and what can we do about it?” more pointedly surveyed the relative responsibility regarding nutrient pollution of waterways. The second survey included a poll (Figure 1) pictured below.
Figure 1. A plot of the number of votes cast in favour of the solutions proposed in response the question “Which do you think are the most viable solutions for solving nutrient pollution moving forward?”. The options from top to bottom as presented in the poll were: “Stronger requirements for nutrient management plans by farmers”, “More enforced, higher fines for polluters”, “Better education and engagement of key stakeholders”, “More investment in water infrastructure (treatment, storage capacity, etc.), Investment in novel technologies like bioremediation (clean up using micro-organisms or plants)”. Forum users could cast multiple votes (41 votes by 29 voters total) and the live results were made visible after posting. The poll ran for 4 days.
Overwhelmingly, the forum users voted in favour of water infrastructure investment (25 votes, 86.2%), followed by harsher fines for polluters (10 votes, 34.5%). The sentiments from the comments under the poll reflected this, many blaming sewage companies and household detergent pollution instead. By contrast, users defended farmers, describing the practices adopted to, for example, “separate slurry from clean yard water, …[while] water companies can mix them both, then in heavy rainfall events just open the gates into the rivers”. This explained the absence of votes for more stringent requirements on farmers’ nutrient management plans. While DEFRA identifies agriculture as the highest impact sector for rivers in England not achieving good status, it also agrees with respondents to our survey and thread that sewage pollution is a major driver of pollution [1]. Reflecting on this feedback, we considered marketing PhoBac as a wastewater treatment option for sewage plants, rather than a smart biofertilizer that curbs agricultural runoff, as farmers may not see reducing runoff as a high priority. “Novel technologies (e.g. Bioremediation)” were less popular, or seen as less of a priority by users, who viewed PhoBac with curiosity coupled with justified apprehension around the unknowns of safety and efficacy. These results showed that PhoBac has high hurdles to market adoption. These results and forum comments must be interpreted in the context of the website used. TFF is an all-purpose board for discussion, commerce and classifieds for farmers across the country. Our efforts were not to sample a representative group of farmers, rather to aggregate opinions from vocal and opinionated farmers.
Design
Prof. Victor de Lorenzo (Systems Biology Department, Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia, CSIC)
When asked about the advantages and disadvantages of cloning methods, Prof. Lorezo said, “Golden Gate and similar approaches based on Type II restriction enzymes are great, even though they leave small scars between assembled DNA segments that can interfere with functionality (very rarely, though). The only methods that enable full compositional freedom are Gibson assembly or DNA synthesis.”
Integration
As we did not generating translational protein fusions where the regions surrounding the assembled DNA segments would be protein coding, we considered that a scar would not be a problem for our purposes, and would not impact gene function in our circuit or native chromosome.
Choosing a Chassis
Dr. Sabrina Cedrolla, Microbiology Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
When asked about the considerations and challenges of using microalgae, Dr Cedrolla shared her experiences, saying she found microalgae sensitive and occasionally, difficult to manage. They require precise amounts of light and oxygen and may not grow optimally if these conditions are not met. They also do not grow as quickly as bacteria and for this may not be as efficient as desired.
Athayde Neves Jr Msc., Microbiology Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
When asked about the viability of Bacillus sp. For industry, Athayde stated Bacillus is widely used because its reliable, can grow on cost-efficient media such as agricultural residue and has a high growth rate. He noted that we must consider the relative ease of genetic manipulation of Bacillus and cyanobacteria the implications this would have on project feasibility.
Prof. Victor de Lorenzo
We asked Prof. Lorenzo whether it is more productive to engineer an easy to manipulate model organism for different uses, or to work with a better adapted organism from the outset. He replied “Definitely, we bet for chassis derived from species that are habituated to live in the places that we want to target. Since we are interested in soil, we go for Pseudomonas putida.“
Integration
Choosing a chassis for PhoBac took weeks of deliberation. We initially chose microalgae as a physiologically robust chassis capable of complex metabolism and compartmentalisation of reactions in vacuole. However, we compromised to cyanobacteria when hearing about the difficulty of culturing microalgae by Dr Cedrolla. As we were researching cyanobacteria, a conversation with Athayde made Bacillus a more attractive option owing to its ease of genetic manipulation which would be more forgiving. This in combination with the strong Bacillus experience of our Wet Lab leader Jazz prompted us towards settling on Bacillus. Prof. Lorenzo made us consider how adapted Bacillus was to the surroundings we aim to implement it in. While Bacillus subtilis is also a soil bacteria, the “tolerance to environmental insults ” makes Pseudomonas putida an attractive candidate for future wastewater remediation work. For the timelines and purposes of our iGEM project however, we maintain that Bacillus subtilis was the appropriate choice.
Choosing a Root Exudate
Prof. Gary Bending, University of Warwick
When asked what root exudate should we use as an indicator for phosphorus depletion, Prof. Bending said: “We’ve done a lot of exudate analysis for oilseed rape and by far the biggest exudate component was malic acid, with smaller amounts of citric acid, succinate and sucrose but there’s lots of stuff in there- in some unpublished work we have picked up higher malic acid exudation in plants grown under low P conditions, however this depended on genotype, and we also picked up the reverse effect.”
Integration
Prof Bending’s comment acted as a starting point for us to narrow down the selection of root exudates to use as an indicator. Looking for a strong and reliable signal, we chose malate, recognising the complexities of its function in different crop species and genotypes.
Implementation
Prof. Philip Poole, Dept of Biology, University of Oxford
Q) Do you think it would be feasible to implement engineered bacterial as biofertilisers in arable farming? If so, do you think they would be effective enough to replace inorganic fertilisers entirely? A) “Replacing inorganic fertiliser completely is unlikely because it is hard to get your biofertilizer strain to colonise the roots of your plants due to competition from other bacteria. However, things like seed inoculation with your strain may give an initial boost to phosphate solubilisation and uptake.”
Integration
Prior to discussion with Prof. Poole, we had only considered foliar sprays of PhoBac. However, by inoculating PhoBac onto seeds may improve germination rates in soils with lower P indexes, a novel selling point and a potential opportunity for seed companies looking to collaborate.
Joshua Gay
Joshua explained that a project like this would require years of testing for it to be deemed safe and efficient for agriculture applications. A realistic time frame would be around 10 years before being ready for commercial use. Joshua liked the idea of a foliar feed used late in season, in early to mid-march for winter crops through to the end of June to align with the critical growth period.
Integration
We fed this feedback directly into our Entrepreneurship and Safety discussions, as such a timescale not only matches the long development cycles of pharmaceutical and agritech firms, but also gives us the time to perform the long term experiments suggested by Dr. Thomas Gorochowski and DEFRA. For PhoBac implementation , while we were debating different modes of soil application, Joshua’s idea of a foliar feed, a liquid fertilizer absorbed through the leaves, sounded attractive as it would reduce the post-processing steps and cost of our biofertilizer, or the need for complex immobilisation.
Prof. Philip Poole
Q) Excessive release of nutrients does not benefit the engineered bacteria and may make it uncompetitive in the soil microbiota. How could we ensure the engineered bacteria thrives despite its additional metabolic burden? This is important for commercialisation, as a more robust and long-lived biofertiliser would be cheaper and require less replacement. A) “There is almost always a metabolic burden associated with sort of thing. The only way to improve the situation is not to make the expression of your genes too strong. The temptation is to drive it to the highest level to solubilise the most phosphate and while this in fine in a pure culture in the laboratory would make the strains very uncompetitive.”
Integration
Prof. Poole’s comment made us reconsider maximising expression as a goal. We therefore thought how to make our strains more competitive and prioritise stable expression in harsh soil conditions. Having met and exchanged ideas with Cambridge in the past, we set about a collaboration with their team design a circuit that combined their antithetical integrated controller with our phosphate release circuit (See Collaborations).
Prof. Victor de Lorenzo
When asked about the challenges in commercialising a genetically engineered bioremediation product, Prof. Lorenzo referred us to his prior writings which stated: “With R&D in environmental research and remediation,[...]public interest has not been translated directly thus far to either massive academic attention or market demand. For the time being the environmental market… is nearly exclusively driven by legislation, which is often watered-down by short-term political and national interests. The challenge to make advanced large-scale environmental interventions a reality involves turning climate change into an opportunity for the creation of wealth. To this end, strengthening translational research in the field is badly needed.”
Integration
This strong sentiment by Prof. Victor de Lorenzo forced us to consider how PhoBac could be used not only as a tool to solve environmental and input supply problems for agriculture, but as an “opportunity for the creation of wealth”. We have considered selling PhoBac cultures to farmers and communities to facilitate phosphate recycling at the local level. This would reduce costs for local farmers by providing a cheap and sustainably supply of fertilizer, as well as an income source for locals and an incentive to clean up rivers and treat wastewater.
Grass and Grain (Mixed Farmer, York, TFF User)
"It doesn't really matter if one farmer has P Index 4 (no fert required),and another farmer has P index 1. That's just simply the situation. Those with P Index 4 quite simply won't have been buying P fertiliser. The market exists for those with either low P index or for maintaining medium P index soils. Suppose you'd need to decide where to price it. “Trying to make something release P as the plant demands it is overthinking the issue. It won't really make any difference imho. Most soils have loads of P, we simply need to keep the reserves topped up. All us farmers need you to do is capture the P in water/sewage outflows etc. and convert it into a concentrated solid product we can either spread with fertiliser spreader, belt lime spreader, sprayer, or muck spreader. Safest if biologically denatured?”
PSQ (Arable Farmer, Scottish Borders, TFF User )
“The easiest way provide adequate P to the plant is to maintain P levels in the soil at an adequate soil index for the crops being grown, and with P being relatively immobile in the soil the recognised pollution vector is 'surface run off' during high rainfall. How will you prevent your product from washing off with surface soil?”
Integration
After receiving multiple comments about the importance of maintaining soil P index over sensitive interventions like PhoBac that measure plant demand, we took time to reassess the utility of PhoBac. If farmers only needed to maintain the P index of the soil and not provide phosphate on demand, our release circuit would have little purpose. Additionally, if PhoBac is applied poorly, before rainfall for example, it would not be an improvement over conventional fertilizer environmentally. While the latter concern could be amended by Prof. Poole’s seed inoculation idea, regarding the utility of PhoBac we believe future work should be directed towards improving the uptake ability and environmental stress tolerance of PhoBac.
Safety
Dr James Horton (University of Bath)
While discussing the risk of horizontal gene transfer of our circuits into the environment, Dr Horton suggested it is better to integrate the genes into the chromosome to decrease the likelihood of unwanted lateral gene transfer.
Prof. Philip Poole
When asked about the risk of and control methods for horizontal gene transfer from engineered bacteria spread in the field, Prof Poole stated: “Field release is always tricky and horizontal gene transfer is a possibility. It would be important to integrate genes into the chromosome, so not on plasmids. There are systems such as toxin and antitoxins that prevent gene transfer, especially if the antitoxin is in a very different part of the genome from the toxin which would be clustered with your phosphate genes. Sticking to greenhouses if often given as a possible solution although GM glasshouses are very expensive to run as the containment measures are complex and expensive.”
Dr Thomas Gorochowski, University of Bristol
Similarly, Dr Gorochowski stated: “There is no one way to ensure [ecological safety of a genetically engineered organism], but the most effective means would be to carry out field trials in a contained environment where you could then check (probably through sequencing) whether the plasmid had spread to others in the population. You'd also need to do long-term studies to experimentally measure the stability under realistic usage conditions. Conversely, you could also consider designing the system with some sort of self-regulatory elements (e.g. control feedback loops) to help ensure certain functions are maintained, although that is incredibly difficult to do. Like with the previous answer, you need evidence for what you are saying and the only way to get that is experiments ”
Integration
While integration of our circuits into the chromosome was previously considered for the benefit of stable transformation and expression, we had not considered how it impacted safety. On Dr Horton’s advice, we firmly chose the chromosome over plasmids as the target for integration. Through repeated conversations with experts, we came to the understanding that the only way to truly guarantee safety would be long-term ecological studies and to test any safety circuits in the environment, explaining the decade or more journey to market described by Joshua Gay.
DEFRA (Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs) Water Quality Regulatory Development Management Team
Development Management Team We asked DEFRA regarding the legality of releasing genetically engineered bacteria into the environment. We received the following statement: “Applications for approval to market a product (including crop seeds for cultivation, foods or feeds) are assessed and decided upon at EU level, while applications to release a GM organism for research and development purposes are considered at national level. For more information see previous release applications and consents in the UK. The assessment process for GM release or marketing applications considers potential safety factors such as toxicity, allergenicity, and the fate of any possible transfer of novel genes to other organisms. Applicants have to provide a dossier of relevant information to cover these points, and this is scrutinised by our committee of independent experts, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE).”
Integration
We took this advice and presented it at a Virtual Symposium on Safety, Bioethics and Policy with Hong Kong, Thessaly and Manchester (See Collaborations). While we had considered gene transfer of our circuits to other organisms, we had not considered toxicity or allergenicity of PhoBac. Should PhoBac be pursued after iGEM, we would plan relevant experiments.
JockCroft (Livestock Farmer, TFF User)
If [PhoBac is] using it to process Bio-solids then a totally different ballgame. It's not just bacterial and virus transmission risk, nor heavy metals. It is also residual drug residues. Our Human race are prescription junkies. Little is discussed in the press, but there are enough anecdotal observation to urge caution in case of unintended effect in the food chain. I most certainly would not use Bio-solids…”
Integration
While we proposed to implement PhoBac downstream of wastewater processing, taking in tertiary wastewater which should be safe and disinfected, we cannot guarantee the absence of drug residues. Therefore, while an improvement over biosolids, we must consider upstream removal of drug residues, or co-culturing PhoBac with a bacteria that could neutralise drug compounds. However, should these drugs be antibiotics, we should refrain from employing antibiotic resistant bacteria for industrial purposes.
Entrepreneurship
See Brainstorming.
Integration
The feedback from many on the current price of phosphate fertilizers, essential as standardised global data takes time to be published, gives us a price range we need to be in to ensure that PhoBac is competitive, and that the farmers who use PhoBac are competitive.
Grass and Grain (TFF User)
"If you can clean P out of water and make it into fertiliser, you'll be killing two birds with one stone. Maybe a market as a water cleaning treatment?"
Integration
While we had originally only considered implementing PhoBac as a module on the end of advanced wastewater treatment facilities, comments such as these and from members of the public after our talks prompted us to consider Phobac as a self-contained product sold to the wider market, be it residential or agricultural.
Inclusion & Education
Leticia Maria
To make our educational material accessible, Leticia suggested “The material must be simple, easy to transport and affordable to print. I suggest having the material be in the form of a leaflet where all”
Integration
On this advice, we made a leaflet, digitally for instantaneous international circulation to our network of contacts in Brazilian schools. See Education
Dr Thomas Gorochowski
“Assume no knowledge and start from the beginning. The audience doesn't typically need to understand every tiny mechanism, but you want them to take away a high level understanding of what you are doing and the core processes. Props often help with this (e.g. images and 3D models).”
Integration
We wove this feedback into our educational materials by explaining basic biology first (the central dogma and gene regulation) before moving onto Synthetic Biology. In our talk to the BRLSI, we frequently repeated key concepts and tested the audience on their knowledge. We heavily utilised animations and metaphors to make otherwise dry circuit explanations digestible.
The Farming Forum Comments
Dry Rot (Livestock Farmer, scottish Highlands)
“The purpose of language is to communicate. When attempting to communicate with ordinary every day people like farmers, I suggest you use words that every day people use. Not long words like "eutrophication" and "bioremediation" which most here have never used and will know you use to make yourself sound clever. It doesn't work and just has the opposite effect.”
fairfarmer (Mixed Farmer)
“I don't think it is to sound clever but agree that when using big words one should explain their meanings because not everyone is qualified in Environmental sciences to PHd level!”
Gulli (Livestock Farmer, Somerset)
“Not sure you need a PhD to understand eutrophication I was taught that in school!”
Ffermer Bach
“remember some of us left school over 40 years ago!”
Integration
We received a series of comments on the language used in our survey, critiquing the use of technical language such as eutrophication and bioremediation. While bioremediation was defined as “clean-up using micro-organisms or plants”, eutrophication was not defined, which was a failure of our communication. As such, in future educational work, we will make sure to define terminology or avoid terminology if unnecessary.
Ethics
Prof. Philip Poole
Q) As many hold unfavourable views about genetic engineering, how would you go about communicating this research to the public? A) “Communicate honestly is the only way forward. Be prepared to answer truthfully and accept that people who disagree may have very valid concerns.”
Dr Wazzock (TFF user)
“I’m a bit wary of releasing genetically engineered remediation bacteria into the environment of im honest. Sounds like a disaster in the making.”
Integration
We applied this feedback with earnest, and set out to discuss the safety and ethics of genetic engineering with Beyond GM, described below.
Beyond GM: Discussing the Ethical Drivers behind the Genetic Engineering Debate
The purpose of human practices is to put the human first when embarking on Synthetic Biology research, and consider whether the research is ethical, responsible and beneficial for humans and the environment. Throughout iGEM, we identified that many teams engaged stakeholders on practical issues of design, safety, efficacy and the economics of their projects, but few interrogated the ethical motivations of their research, and the values of the stakeholders who would be opposed or hesitant towards their project. This is critical to future adoption of a Synthetic Biology product, as it was our perception that products that involve genetic engineering (GE), see Golden Rice , are rejected on health and safety grounds at face value, while underlying ethical drivers potentially act beneath. We hypothesised that these ethical factors may include appeals to the sanctity of nature in opposition to directed modification by humans, and unease at attempting to alter life: autonomous, evolving, possessing the potential for exponential growth and exponential consequences. We approached Pat Thomas , Director of GM critical advocacy group looking to learn more about these potential ethical drivers in members of the public, but we came away surprisingly with a greater awareness of ourselves, and the ethical drivers that motivate scientists.
Beyond GM is an independent civil society group founded in 2014 representing public concerns surrounding genetically modified organisms.
Throughout our discussion, Pat emphasised the contemporary debate focusing on the safety and risk of GE was reductive, and that concerns could range from the ecological to the moral and metaphysical. She took issue with the vague definitions of “nature” employed by GE advocates, who defend targeted mutations made to their organisms as being possible by natural means. She argued that these alterations need to reviewed on a case-by-case basis, as selection and retention of such mutations could be “in the service of industry and not nature”, i.e., unnatural. We argued that traditional breeding selects and retains unnatural genotypes, and Pat conceded that modern agriculture is not natural, but still has natural qualities. While this sounded vague at first, Pat firmly made a distinction between “cell level interventions” and “genomic level interventions”. To those that view even the modern agricultural environment and its organisms as “natural”, the former is the furthest level of intervention acceptable. By contrast, Pat appreciated the transparency of Synthetic Biology treating GE as a technology, employing engineering analogies rather than attempting to promote man-made genetic interventions as “natural”. Pat pointed out that for patents to be awarded, an item must be non-natural, making claims of “naturalness” by GE advocates contradictory.
Regarding this aspect of the conversation, our team concluded that while academics and GE advocates view today’s environment and its organisms as chimeric and anthropogenic, already altered by human intervention and selection, it is necessary to recognise that in the eyes of many citizens, GE represents a step change in how we manipulate life. While some may disagree with discriminating against GE, we propose that there may be occasions where presenting genetic modifications as “unnatural” may be productive in fostering public trust, rather than getting mired in ontological discussions over the meaning of “nature”. While Pat was interested in PhoBac and the idea of using fertilizer more sensitively, she was concerned about how it would interact with other bacteria in the soil and water, and she stressed caution on the unknowns that would follow releasing a new organism to nature. We frequently received this feedback across our human practice activities, and mentioned safety measures we had designed. Again, rather than getting stuck in exchanges over safety and risk, Pat drew our attention to a larger weakness of the contemporary GE debate: the lack of introspection by scientists, who are not trained to be self-reflective by their institutions. In a race to seize funding and publications, scientists push forward with their research without pausing to consider the ethical aspects, dual-use implications, and above all, the necessity of their work. That is, whether their problem could be solved by other means, or whether their solution is markedly better than other alternatives. This is an especially important consideration for the iGEM competition, where problems are tackled exclusively from a Synthetic Biology perspective instead of holistic problem solving encompassing cultural and legislative changes. Pat also made an incisive point on how scientists conduct public engagement. Too often is the perspective of scientists “if only the public were more educated, they would come to our point of view”. Participating on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Pat observed how lay members of the public came forward with sharp, intelligent questions, asking for the research rationale and how the regulations would be upheld. She stressed that we should not approach the public with education in mind, rather we should approach them on an equal footing. We came to understand that irrespective of whether education is causally related to opinions on GE, the opinions of lay citizens are invaluably insightful, and force scientists to question their most basic assumptions and inner motivations. This is conducive to ethically robust research. We implemented this in our talk to the BRLSI, where we interspliced our lecture with opportunities for the audience to give their opinion and gut reaction to the synthetic biology presented. We also closed out the talk by communicating what we had learnt from Pat, offering a moment of introspection, asking of ourselves and of other scientists to honestly evaluate whether their work is indeed a positive force in the world.
The Wisdom of Crowds
Following this conversation, we propose that it is the greater power given to humans by new GE technologies that provokes most anxiety, and that appeals to “nature” by many are because it represents a controlled and self-regulating system, not simply an idealised state of the environment external to human intervention. Rather than attempting to assure stakeholders with evidence that may often be inadequate, it is imperative to communicate uncertainties from the outset and involve stakeholders as collaborators, not as an audience. We also encourage future iGEM teams to consider how they could implement their project to solve problems in conjunction with changes to cultural practices and legislation, as well as to reach out to civil society groups like Beyond GM, who in Pat’s words, “are a proxy for talking to Mr and Mrs average”.
References
- Environmental Audit Committee, 2022. Water Quality in Rivers [Online]. (Water Quality in Rivers, Summary 4). House of Commons, p.139. Available from: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmenvaud/74/summary.html.