Human practice

Introduction

We thought that Human Practice means Social Responsibility we should fulfill as researchers and practiced the following projects. Our main purposes of them are a public relation (publication of our research and activity between researchers) and education for juniors (succession planning).

Specifically, we, team UT-Tokyo2010, accomplished these projects:
・Science cafe
・Lecture presentation for high school students
・Made an open source version of our research
・Submitted the story of iGEM to a little magazine for young researchers
・Hosted iGEM Summer Meetup (Japan, Kanto region)
・Collected general ideas about synthetic biology from a large number of questionnaires, in cooperation with team Japan,
・Made a poster presentation in ‘BioExpo’ , a big exhibition in which most of bioscience companies meet, and increased the publicity of iGEM

Collaboration

We also achieved some projects that collaborated on with teams in Japan. Each team in Japan discusses with other teams regularly and actively, using Skype and Wiki on the Web. These collaborations enabled every team to share information of all teams in Japan and activate one another.
The concrete projects are these following things:
・Submitted a story to a magazine for young researchers (in-cube)
Particularly UT-Tokyo and TMU wrote up the story, but 7 teams in Japan completed it.
・iGEM Summer Meetup in Japan (in Kyoto)
6 teams in Japan met in Kyoto University in order to practice presentation in English.
・iGEM Summer Meetup in Tokyo
UT-Tokyo asked Tokyo-Tech for cooperation to hold it. 5 teams near Tokyo met there. We hosted it for the purpose of the activity with teams that could not join the above.
・Questionnaire
5 teams in Japan, mainly Kyoto University, worked it. (In part, UT-Tokyo did by itself.) The purpose is to find statistically the relationship between an image of biology and one’s background, collecting answers from lots of people.
・Made a poster presentation in BioEXPO
UT-Tokyo and TMU made a poster presentation together in the exhibition for bioscience companies and laboratories. (Osaka University helped partly.)

Science Cafe

The UT-Tokyo team held a science cafe in the university festival—May Festival(Gogatsu-sai) during May 29th and 30th ,2010.

Free talking（with free drink）

Poster・display

Holding a seminar for attracted students to synthetic biology

We held a seminar for high school students and 35 students attended.
In this seminar, many people had got interested in molecular biology. Moreover, more than 10 students told us they had got attracted to synthetic biology and especially in iGEM. This means the seminar was successfully contributed to future iGEM participant.
The seminar was held on 30th July 2010 at a private school, SEG (Scientific Education Group), which is one of our sponsors. This was led by Ryo Taniuchi and Ryo Kariyazono, members of UT-Tokyo team.
We made a lecture of 4 hours on molecular biology and synthetic biology. For students to easily understand,　we effectively utilized visual materials, for example CGs that was broadcasted by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). We also had a discussion time with students. It was an exciting seminar.
The contents of the lecture are below:
・About GFP ( its contributions to biology by visualizing molecules and cells. Hot topic of 2008 Nobel Prize )
・basics of molecular cell biology (about DNA, the central dogma, etc)
・an introduction to Synthetic Biology

Open-source project of Our Research

In addition to the iGEM official Wiki, we built an official Website in Japanese. This is caused by an idea, open-source of our experiments. We assure you that this leads to scientific development by abandoning intellectual property rights as possible and offering information quickly to many researchers.
This weblog carries possible every contents on our experimental notebooks. This open-source enabled us to deepen exchange between internal and other teams and have information in common. Besides, we became be able to search quickly past experiments and take part in an active discussion on the web.

Writing and Handing out the Journal for Young Researchers

With Tokyo-Metropolitan,We write articles on iGEM in the journal “in-cube", which is published by Leaveanest, a sponsor for UT-Tokyo and hand out them to students. This journal is the free paper for many people; undergraduate, graduate students, and young researchers. We placed the introduction of iGEM and outlines of internal teams’ projects here. To carry these timely articles in this journal will lead to raising our profiles, and we expect a lot of outstanding students to join us in the near future.(We’ll continue these activities.)

Summer Meetup at Kyoto （Japan Meetup in Kyoto）

On 18th August 2010, teams in Japan gathered together in “Summer meetup”. This year, the meeting was took place at Kyoto University (Hosted by team Kyoto), as last year University of Tokyo (UT-Tokyo（2010）/Todai-Tokyo(2009)) had been the host and meeting place.
The aim of this meetup was to cultivate ideas with other teams and to enhance friendship with them. Each team was supposed to give a presentation on their projects followed by a mutual discussion with other teams. 5 teams attended to make presentations (Kyoto、UT-Tokyo、Tokyo-Metropolitan、Osaka、KIT-Kyoto), and 1 team, Tokyo-tech, delegated an observer.
UT-Tokyo team made a presentation on two of our three projects : “Sudoku” project and “fundamental cure of allergy“ project. Especially on Sudoku, our main project, active discussion was heated with many questions and suggestions from other teams.
After the presentation meeting, we had a social party and made the bond with between teams tight.

Meetup at Tokyo institute of Techonology　(Eastern Japan Meetup in Tokyo)

In addition to meet up at Kyoto, meetup for Tokyo area team was held led by UT-Tokyo. This was because only a few teams in eastern Japan had attended the meetup on 18th August above, because of long distance to Kyoto.
This time, we gathered at Suzukakedai Campus of Tokyo Institute of Technology on 23rd August. All 5 teams in Tokyo area (UT-Tokyo, Chiba, Tokyo-tech, TMU, Tokyo-NoKoGen) attended, owing to close combination between teams and strong concern for project of UT-Tokyo.
In this meeting, the aim of our team was to have a direct discussion and to get familiar with Prof. Daisuke Kiga, the instructor of Tokyo-tech team and most leading synthetic biologist in Japan.
At first in the meeting, attendants were divided in four small groups, in which members from each team explained their projects and discussed together. Moreover, on the very day, two members of iGEM2009 Cambridge (Caitlin Cockerton et al.) visited to meet Prof. Kiga to make a research on the relationship between biotechnology and industry. We had a talk with them about jamboree last year and cultural difference between England and Japan.
After small group discussion, UT-Tokyo team made a full presentation, with requests from other teams and Prof. KIga. This was benefit for both sides, as other teams had long been interested in our Sudoku project. After the presentation, fortunately, Prof. Kiga gave us various advices. An impressive his comment: “I’d be willing to go over to UT-Tokyo from Tokyo-Tech immediately if I could”. It may just be a complement, but at least we got some confidence about our project.

Questionnaires

May festival (Gogatsu-sai)

iGEM Japan

iGEM Kyoto suggested "Human Practice iGEM Japan" project to other iGEM teams in Japan. Five Universities (including Kyoto) participated in this project. iGEM Kyoto leads the project, and successfully we have gotten over 1500 answers! According to the results, we revealed the difference of opinion between students and the others.We also found that Japanese have a positive impression about biotechnology, but in parallel they worry about the safety very much.

Methods

Five out of the nine Japanese teams, KIT-Kyoto, Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo_Metropolitan, and UT-Tokyo took part in this project. We all used paper-based questionnaire, but the places and terms are different depending on teams.

Targets, Terms, and Places

KIT-Kyoto

• Students
  • July 12 - September 26 at Kyoto Institute of Technology University
• Others
  • August 10 at Open Campus in Kyoto Institute of Technology University

Kyoto

• Students
  • July 12 - September 26 at Kyoto University
• Others
  • August 28, 29 at Masukata Shopping Street, Kyoto
  • September 4 at Grace Tanaka, a supermarket, Kyoto
  • September 11, 12 at Coop Shimogamo, Kyoto

Osaka

• Others
  • August 10 at Osaka University from high school student or their parents

Tokyo_Metropolitan

• Students
  • July 1 - September 26 at Tokyo Metropolitan University
  • July 30 - September 26 (Tokyo_Metropolitan team member’s friends)
• Others
  • June 30 - July 2 in BIO EXPO JAPAN (http://www.bio-expo.jp/en/Home/) at Tokyo.
  • July 16 in Public Forum on Education Development Project at Tokyo Metropolitan University
  • July 18, August 20 in Open Lab at Tokyo Metropolitan University
  • September 18, 19 in Mitaka Science and Technology Fair at Tokyo
  • August 7 - September 26 (Tokyo_Metropolitan team member's family and acquaintances)

UT-Tokyo

• Others (High School Students)
  • July 31 at SEG, a cram school, Tokyo

Questionnaire

We made 2 similar kinds of questionnaire. One is "Attitude survey of genetic engineering" and the other is "Attitude survey of biotechnology." They are almost the same, but "Attitude survey of biotechnology" has a little different question from "Attitude survey of genetic engineering". We only changed the word "genetic engineering" of the survey for "biotechnology" in order to make "Attitude survey of biotechnology."

And we attempted to indicate difference of image between "genetic engineering" and "biotechnology".

Attitude survey of ( genetic engineering or biotechnology )

1. When shopping, do you buy "not genetically modified food”?
   • [ Always buy / Tend to buy / Hardly mind / Not mind / I have never seen such an indication ]
2. What do you associate with ( genetic engineering or biotechnology )? (※Please encircle all that apply)
   • [ Clone / GM crops (foods) / Patent / DNA / Genome / Medicine / Cosmetic / Bioethics / Virus / Artificial Life / Novel Prize / Environment / Biological weapon / iPS cells, ES cells / Biofuel / Biohazard / Others( ) ]
3. If there is no difference in effectiveness, what do you think about using the drugs manufactured by ( genetic engineering or biotechnology )?
   • [ Not mind I use / Hardly mind I use / If possible, I don't want to use / I must not use / I don't know ]
4. What do you think of the artificial genetic mutation by ( genetic engineering or biotechnology )?
   • [ Bad / Little bad / Little good / Good ]
5. Which trend of information about ( genetic engineering or biotechnology ) is major, negative or positive?
   • [ Negative / About the same degree / Positive / No idea ]
6. Do you think Japan actively tackles on ( genetic engineering or biotechnology )?
   • [ Yes / Partly yes / Not so much / No ]
7. Do you think the research on ( genetic engineering or biotechnology ) should continue?
   • [ Yes / No ]
   • If you answered [Yes], please encircle every fit reason from below.
     1. Because it may be useful for food crisis.
     2. Because it may solve environmental problems.
     3. Because it may solve energy problems.
     4. Because it may be applied to medicine.
     5. Because it may create a business opportunity.
     6. Because it can be used in the preservation of the species.
     7. Because it symbolizes the development of science and technology.
     8. Because it has already been put to practical use in many countries.
     9. Because it has many possibilities.
     10. Because it is interesting as an academic subject or a research topic.
     11. Others( )
   • If you answered [No], please encircle every reason from below.
     1. Because it can create evil things harmful to environment and humans.
     2. Because products of it can be harmful to ecosystem.
     3. Because products of it can be harmful to human body.
     4. Because it is unethical.
     5. Because people say it is dangerous.
     6. Because it can be applied to evil use.
     7. Because there are not enough laws governing it.
     8. Because it can be replaced by other technologies.
     9. Because it seems to have less potential than other technologies.
     10. Because I feel somehow uneasy in using it.
     11. Others( )
8. Have you ever heard the word, "Synthetic biology"?
   • [ Yes / No ]

[ This is the common Method article of participating universities of “iGEM Japan Human Practice”(KIT-Kyoto, Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo_Metropolitan, and UT-Tokyo).iGEM Kyoto has the responsibility for the wording. ]

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Bio EXPO

iGEM has not been known to many people in Japan yet. Our team, UT-Tokyo participated in BIO EXPO JAPAN with TMU during June 30-July 2 2010.
BIO EXPO JAPAN is Japan’s largest bio event, held at Tokyo International Exhibition Center. We discussed the present state of biotechnology with more than 230 exhibitors and advertised iGEM. At first, there were no people who had hear iGEM, but visitors showed an interest in iGEM after we talk with us. They gave us a lot of helpful advices and told us the field of development. Also, we formed strong personal relationships with exhibitors.
However, it was unlucky that in depression, most exhibitors did not offer to “invest” in our team although they were interested in iGEM. Fund-raising for the project of iGEM is one of the challenges In future. In Japan, companies are unwilling to invest in undergraduates, on the other hand, in America, the situation is quite different. So we Japan teams will challenge to change the state.

Future

Team UT-Tokyo and other teams in Japan will continue such activities after Jamboree. In addition, we will keep the heat on, in order to help raise the profile of iGEM, synthetic biology and BioBrick and establish the support system for junior members. Then, because only 9 teams participate even this year, we would like to make the system that enable far more teams to join freely.
Furthermore, our much bigger goal is to lead Japanese educational organization, government or companies to establish some support system for young researchers including undergraduate students. A few Japanese universities allow undergraduate students (in spite of 4th-year-students) to research on novel thesis by themselves. Researchers in Japan are likely to educate only juniors of their laboratories, feeling obligated. Our continuous activities would promote developing outstanding researchers, especially young ones, in Japan.

As well, we will participate the following events for the other two months of 2010.
・To make a presentation in Japanese Society for Cell Synthesis Research, that is a conference of synthetic biology led by Prof. Kiga, the instructor of Tokyo-tech team, and so on. (UT-Tokyo, TMU)
・To continue writing up in ‘in-cube’ that is a little magazine for young researchers told in the above. (UT-Tokyo, TMU)
・To give a lecture in Science agora and Leaveanest exposition of experiment demonstration, whose targets are high school and younger students .

Collaboration

On August 23, UT-Tokyo and teams from 4 eastern Japanese universities (Tokyo_Tech, Tokyo_Metropolitan, Tokyo-NoKoGen & Chiba) held a meetup at Suzukakedai, hometown of Tokyo_Tech. In this meetup Tokyo_Tech and we discussed the weakness of their and our projects and got ideas to improve.

Safety

Our whole project is executed only in laboratory. Especially, the assay of MS2 virus is done only in clean bench.

The parts we used including MS2 phage don't raise any issues because MS2 virus is not infectious to human or have toxicity. MS2 virus is infectious to E.coli but there is a lot of E.coli infected by MS2 virus outside laboratory and the function of our E.coli is not hazardous if one or several bioparts change their function or stop working as intended.

We have concluded that the method of containment the applicant implemented fulfills the safety requirements we have set forth. The applicant possesses the ability to practice laboratory safety, and the relevant equipment abides to Japanese law.