Advocacy Science Explained - using biotechnology as a case study

Cambridge researcher Ksenia Gerasimova unravels how advocacy science has changed political discourse in science, and the general perception of the role of science in contemporary society.

Biotechnology is an extreme example of how science has had to confront issues such as the place and role of science in society, the need for scientists to communicate and advocate their research to the public and policy-makers, secure funding and address the ethical concerns relating to their research. 

This paper discusses the use of term ‘advocacy science’ which is communication of science that goes beyond simple reporting of scientific findings, using two case studies in biotechnology.

• The first, is the 'Puzstai case', when on the documentary, 'World in Action' in 1998, Dr Arpad Puzstai from the Rowett Institute of Research in Scotland raised his concerns over GM foods, in regards to a study conducted at the institute aiming to transfer a snowdrop plant gene to potato (Puzstai 1991). The UK media reacted in force. This sparked the debate over the use of GM crops, and also provoked another about the very way scientific experiments are conducted, interpreted and communicated. 
• The second case study is the Seralini Case, when in 2012 a publication by Professor Gilles-Éric Séralini, at the University of Caen, France, on the 'Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize' catalysed the discussion not only amongst the media, but also within the scientific community on where the moral aspects of science and scientific communication stands.

Over a relatively short period of time 1998-2012 a large change in the perception of science had happened: it was now seen in a postmodernist style as a social construct, including the natural scientists themselves.

The paper argues that advocacy science should be used to distinguish the engagement of modern civil society organisations to interpret scientific knowledge for their lobbying. It illustrates how this new communicative process has changed not only the politics surrounding science, but our perception of the role of science in contemporary society. It cites OpenPlant as an example of where generic lower-level tools that are largely free of IP constraints can be freely shared to promote innovation in plant synthetic biology (OpenPlant 2016).

Gerasimova suggests that the controversies in the GM debate have contributed not just to policy-making for GM crops, but also to the way biotechnological science, and possibly even science in general, is communicated and perceived. 

 The full article can be read at: 
Gerasimova, K., 2017. Advocacy Science: Explaining the Term with Case Studies from Biotechnology. Science and Engineering Ethics, pp.1-23.

Biomaker Challenge - building collaborations through low-cost instrumentation

Biomaker Challenge is a four-month programme challenging interdisciplinary teams to build low-cost sensors and instruments for biology. The programme aims to facilitate exchange between the biological and physical sciences, engineering, and humanities for the development of open source biological instrumentation using commodity electronics and DIY approaches.

The inaugural 2017 cohort comprises 130 participants working in 41 teams on biological and biomedical devices, instruments, and sensors.  Participating teams received a Biomaker Toolkit and a discretionary budget for additional sensors, components, consumables, and mechanical fabrication worth up to £1000.

Teams of all sizes were considered for the grant and range from an individual to twelve people. Interdisciplinarity within participating teams is prioritised and although most participants are students or staff at the University of Cambridge, John Innes Centre or the Earlham Institute, external team members are welcome and included designers from the Royal College of Art, computer scientists from ARM, local artists, makers, and entrepreneurs.

During the challenge, we offer assistance and support providing components and access to prototyping facilities in Cambridge such as Cambridge Makespace and the Media Studio on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. We also run periodic technical workshops and meetups to encourage teams to interact and help share skills and ideas. Participating teams will document a full set of assembly/fabrication instructions, images, and a list of components used, which are made publicly accessible via GitHub. This will enable others to replicate and build on their work for their own research questions. The challenge culminates on 21 October 2017 in a public exhibit, the Biomaker Fayre, where participants will demonstrate their creations and prizes will be awarded for especially creative and enabling projects.

The Challenge will repeat in 2018 and we look forward to seeing the projects develop with a new cohort of participants to further increase access to low-cost, open access biological tools and technologies.

Example Projects

Real-Time monitoring of cell proliferation

An absorbance sensor that can be used inside a cell culture incubator for real-time monitoring of culture medium pH and cell density. The system is able to automatically transmit this data to an email server for remote monitoring of cultured cells.

Microfluidic Turntable for molecular diagnostic testing

An Arduino controlled turntable with a stroboscope for disk visualisation on screen and optical detection for absorbance and fluorescence measurements. The disc, fabricated using a laser cutter and paper plotter, is rotated by an Arduino controlled motor. Fluid actuation is also controlled by Arduino, changing the rotation direction and revolutions per second to achieve pumping, mixing and separation.

A programmable staging mount, and an imaging platform for a microfluidics based conditioned learning hub for motile bacterial cells.

By developing a maze traversal challenge, different scenarios for chemotactic bacterial colonies to employ their decision-making machinery and navigate through the maze will be assessed. This may lead to an understanding of cognition, memory and learning in bacterial colonies.

John Innes Centre researchers develop plant-made synthetic polio vaccine

Researchers at the John Innes Centre, including OpenPlant PI Prof George Lomonossoff, and collaborators, have published research to produce a new polio vaccine in plants, using the HyperTrans transient expression system. The work, funded by the World Health Organisation, was published in Nature Communications. It is hoped that this new polio vaccine will be a move towards global eradication of the disease. The publication was covered by JIC News and the BBC.

Marsian, J., Fox, H., Bahar, M.W., Kotecha, A., Fry, E.E., Stuart, D.I., Macadam, A.J., Rowlands, D.J., & Lomonossoff, G.P. (2017) Plant-made polio type 3 stabilized VLPs—a candidate synthetic polio vaccine. Nature Communications 8, Article number: 245.

Abstract

Poliovirus (PV) is the causative agent of poliomyelitis, a crippling human disease known since antiquity. PV occurs in two distinct antigenic forms, D and C, of which only the D form elicits a robust neutralizing response. Developing a synthetically produced stabilized virus-like particle (sVLP)-based vaccine with D antigenicity, without the drawbacks of current vaccines, will be a major step towards the final eradication of poliovirus. Such a sVLP would retain the native antigenic conformation and the repetitive structure of the original virus particle, but lack infectious genomic material. In this study, we report the production of synthetically stabilized PV VLPs in plants. Mice carrying the gene for the human PV receptor are protected from wild-type PV when immunized with the plant-made PV sVLPs. Structural analysis of the stabilized mutant at 3.6 Å resolution by cryo-electron microscopy and single-particle reconstruction reveals a structure almost indistinguishable from wild-type PV3.

BoomTown Fair, August 2017

Blog post written by Emma McKechnie-Welsch, and reproduced with permission from The SAW Trust. Original blog post can be found here: http://sawtrust.org/news/boomtown-festival-august-2017

Science tent at Kidztown

BoomTown Fair is an annual music and arts festival held in Winchester. It attracts up to 60,000 people a year. The festival hosts a wide range of performances across its many stages, providing visually impressive themed areas on-site.

This is also the case with Kidztown, the diverse and interactive family area. OpenPlant and the SAW Trust were key contributors to the Kidztown science tent. Children here were introduced to different natural plant-based products in a fun and engaging way. This included a carefully devised potion-making, craft and spell-writing stand.

The stand, titled "Marvellous Medicines," revolved around our periodic table of natural products. The children were tasked with making a magical potion, picking just one component from each block of the periodic table for their ingredients. The blue block contributed a plant material that would provide the colour pigmentation for the potion, including the magical element of colour change in different pH solutions. The red block contained plants with appealing scents, extracted as essential oils, to give the potion a delightful smell. Finally, the yellow block contained citrus fruit. The citric acid in this can be used to observe the colour change.

Periodic table of plants

Making the Potions

Once the children had selected their ingredients, they ground up the blue item (either red cabbage, berries, turmeric or selected flowers) using a pestle and mortar. They then practised using pipettes, adding 75 percent ethanol to extract the pigment. This was transferred to their potion flask. They next added the essential oil corresponding to their red item and 1 millilitre of bicarbonate of soda solution to observe the first colour change. Last of all, 35 millilitres of citric acid solution was added to create the final colour of their potion. It was explained that citric acid was the compound in citrus fruit that made it taste so sharp.

Whilst a slight fizz was observed upon adding the citric acid, due to it reacting with the bicarbonate of soda, only a very small amount of the bicarb was present. The final step involved adding a green slime of more bicarb mixed with washing up liquid, which caused the potions to fizz over and release the essential oil smell. If the kids wanted an extra colourful potion they also added food colouring gel.

Magical ingredients

Colourful results

Making potions

Marvellous Medicine's Art and Writing

Artist Molly Barrett helped the children create their own artistic potion bottle, cutting out bottle shapes from cardboard and sticking dried plant products to them. Our writer Ali Pritchard asked the children to think about what they wanted their potion to do, and they wrote a spell to cast over their potion for it to work. This was written on acetate and stuck to their art creation. 

Marvellous Medicines team members

Throughout, the children learned about a plant’s ability to make different compounds that define their features such as colour, scent and taste. They extracted the colour pigment themselves and used other natural extracts to complete their potions, observing how we can use things that plants make for our own products. The older children also learned about pH and colour indicators, a classic chemistry practical they will no doubt carry out in secondary school. A further use for plants was discovered in the art stand: the plant materials could be used as 3D elements to decorate the potion bottles.

The finished potions

The children let their creativity run wild by imagining what their natural product potion could achieve. Whilst compounds produced by plants may not be able to turn glitter into gold or the sea into Ribena, hopefully the children took away the idea that many of the compounds produced within plants can be used in ways they previously hadn't thought about. Not least, the children had lots of fun exploring ideas around magical plant extracts and many of the children returned to the stand later on.

Marvellous Medicines couldn’t have been a success without the hard-working team, who over three days helped the children through all the tasks. A big thank you goes to the team and to BoomTown for having us!

The Marvellous Medicines Team

Cambridge Consultant Synthetic Biology PhD Studentship

Cambridge Consultants is building an exciting new business in biotechnology, particularly synthetic biology. They’re working to bring together biology, chemistry and engineering to design and build engineered biological systems. As part of this mission, they're looking for a bright, motivated PhD student to join the team on an internship.

No deadline has been given but the advert was posted in Aug 2017.

With a strong background in biochemistry or molecular biology, the successful applicant will work alongside our scientists and engineers to apply their scientific skills and knowledge to our synthetic biology projects.  They’ll learn how new technology is applied in a business context and the challenges this presents.  

This is a three-month internship with flexible timing.

More information >>

[Closes 1 Sep 2017] Plant Synthetic Biology Assistant/Associate Professor (University of Nebraska)

Plant Synthetic Biology Assistant/Associate Professor The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) is committed to conducting world-class research in plant biochemistry and has recently secured a $20 million Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Grant from the NSF to establish the Center for Root and Rhizobiome Innovation (CRRI). Reflecting the institutional commitment to building infrastructure in plant biochemistry, UNL is seeking applicants for nine-month (academic year) tenure-leading Assistant Professor or Associate Professor faculty position (80% research and 20% teaching) in the Department of Biochemistry and the Center for Plant Science Innovation.

They will address the development and application of synthetic biology tools to address questions central to plant biology that contribute to crop productivity and/or quality.

Required qualifications include a PhD or equivalent in biochemistry, biology, molecular biology, plant physiology or related field; a minimum of two years of postdoctoral experience; and a strong record of original research as evidenced by peer- reviewed publications. For Assistant Professor, the incumbent is expected to develop an internationally recognized research program that attracts federal, commodity, international foundation, and/or industry funding leading to research results published in refereed scientific journals and presented at professional meetings. Applicants at the Associate Professor levels must have an externally supported research program and/or sufficient private sector experience, with publication, patent, and presentation outcomes demonstrating sustained and recognized research productivity. The incumbent will broadly address the development of synthetic biology tools, which may include but are not limited to those involving genome editing, gene stacking, and/or RNA-based control of gene expression and apply these tools for studies of photosynthesis, central carbon metabolism, specialized metabolism or other biochemical or biological processes that lead to improved crop germplasm. The ability to apply computational methods for use of large data sets in synthetic biology tool development is also desired. The university offers state of the art proteomics and metabolomics core facilities in the Center for Biotechnology and high-speed computing resources in the Holland Computing Center. Extensive field facilities, state-of-the-art image-based phenotyping instrumentation, breeding resources, and crop transformation core capacity are available to support translational research. This position is part of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources initiative in Stress Biology, which offers a highly collaborative environment to develop focused research programs linked with modern biochemical methodologies, metabolic engineering, metabolomics, genomics, and computational approaches. A competitive start-up package and appropriate laboratory and office space will be offered.

The incumbent will contribute to the teaching mission of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources and in particular will develop and teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the biochemistry core curriculum. It is expected that the incumbent will contribute to recruitment, retention and placement activities; incorporation of outcomes assessment; engagement in instructional improvement; mentoring undergraduate and graduate students; and serve on department, college, and UNL committees as appropriate.

To learn more about the University of Nebraska, the Department of Biochemistry and the Center for Plant Science Innovation see http://biochem.unl.edu ; http://www.unl.edu/psi/ .

How to Apply

To view details of the position and make application, go to http://employment.unl.edu Search for position F_170058. Click on “Apply to this job.”

Postdoctoral Research Fellow on engineering synthetic phage (Jaramillo Lab, Warwick University)

The goal of the Jaramillo lab is to achieve proof of concept for synthetic phages within the next 3 years. By working at the interface of molecular biology, combinatorial optimisation, microfluidics, directed evolution and 3D printing it is hoped that reaching this goal will accelerate more synthetic biology research globally thus enhancing our ability to combat diseases of the future.

There is no closing date listed, but the advert was posted in Aug 2017

From Warwick University:

“Superbugs…these are our babies…now they have body piercings and anger” - House, TV Show

According to the World Health Organisation antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today. The prevalent use of modern antibiotics over the last century has led to a bacterial arms race with increasingly potent infections proving more difficult to treat as each year passes. As the efficacy of our current armoury of antibiotics wanes, hospital stays lengthen, medical costs rise and without urgent action we will soon enter a post-antibiotic world where common infections will kill once again. While there are some new antibiotics in development, none of them are expected to be effective against the most dangerous forms of antibiotic-resistant bacteria of the future.

Is there a possible response that could safeguard humanity? Professor Alfonso Jaramillo thinks so and his lab at the University of Warwick is working hard to provide such a solution. It is a multidisciplinary lab that develops novel automated methodologies for design optimisation using computers, viruses or living cells for use in Phage Therapy. The ambition is the eventual development of synthetic phages, powerful antimicrobials which if their work proves successful will herald a new age in the fight against bacterium. Progress of the lab since 2013 has been steady with the foundations already laid of new technologies (computational and experimental) for the engineering of biomolecules. The key current focus is on the creation of automated algorithms that enable directed evolution in support of the difficult design phase of Synthetic Biology, by developing a general methodology for the de novo engineering of synthetic RNA parts and circuits it is hoped they will work robustly as targeted in a given cellular context.

The goal of the lab is to achieve proof of concept within the next 3 years. By working at the interface of molecular biology, combinatorial optimisation, microfluidics, directed evolution and 3D printing it is hoped that reaching this goal will accelerate more synthetic biology research globally thus enhancing our ability to combat diseases of the future.

This is where you come in, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow we need your expertise to help build the lab’s research capability. You will form part of a high profile international team with labs in Warwick and ISSB in France. Your contribution to the lab’s body of knowledge in support of the goal of reaching proof of concept will have a direct impact on one of the most urgent health threats facing humanity.

More information >> [PDF] 

[Closes 22 Aug 2017] Research Associate position on open hardware for science (University of Bath)

From University of Bath:

Open source hardware could bring about a step change in science and medicine, by making high quality instruments more widely available and easier to customise. We are looking for a talented researcher with (or soon to be awarded) a PhD in Physics, Engineering, or a related discipline, to work as part of the "Open Lab Instrumentation" project that includes the Universities of Bath and Cambridge as well as our partners STICLab in Tanzania.

Salary: Starting from £32,004, rising to £38,183
Placed On: Monday 24 July 2017
Closing Date: Tuesday 22 August 2017
Interview Date: To be confirmed
Reference: SF5079

This project will enable high quality open-source instrumentation, by characterising and improving the mechanical properties of 3D printed mechanisms, then using these optimised structures, together with readily available electronic and optical components, as building blocks for microscopes, spectrometers, micromanipulators and more. Our first open instrument, the OpenFlexure Microscope, has already been reproduced by a number of groups, and tested in applications from malaria diagnostics to water quality monitoring.

You will build an understanding of how the small-scale structure of 3D printed parts (the "toolpath") affects their properties, then use this understanding to create improved toolpaths that result in stronger or more flexible parts.  This will involve both simulations and lab-based measurements, as well as adapting open-source software tools to generate the optimised toolpaths.  You will then go on to create designs for instrumentation using those optimisations, as well as contributing to software tools that allow others to do the same.  Good programming skills are essential, and experience in instrumentation design, mechanical simulation, and/or 3D printing is highly desirable.   As our goal is open-source hardware, we will contribute to various open source projects as well as starting new ones, and experience of open or collaborative development of either software or hardware would be particularly valuable.

You will be based within the Centre for Photonics and Photonic Materials in the Department of Physics.  This post is funded by an EPSRC project that is part of the Global Challenges Research Fund, announced by the UK Government to support cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries.  In keeping with the international remit of this funding, there will be opportunities to travel to meet our Tanzanian partners, and to work with the end-users of our new instruments. 

Physics at the University of Bath is a research-led Department, ranked highly in the UK in the latest Research Excellence Framework, and the University recently attained a Gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework. Both the Department and the University are committed to providing a supportive and inclusive working environment, with an active Athena Swan programme and opportunities for researchers to receive training, mentorship, and career development.

Informal enquiries are encouraged, and should be directed to Dr. Richard Bowman (r.w.bowman@bath.ac.uk). 

More information >>

UK SynBio Start-Up Survey published showing thriving East of England ecosystem

SynbiCITE have published the first survey of the UK synthetic biology start-up ecosystem, highlighting the changing sources of innovation and entrepreneurship at work in the sector from a macro-level perspective.

The report covers activity between 2000 and 2016 in research and development, technology transfer, industrial sectors, financing and investors. Its key finding were:

• The UK produced more than 146 synthetic biology start-ups between 2000 and 2016.
• More than half (54%) of new start-ups are tech transfer start- ups,
• Synthetic biology start-up activity is concentrated in the South-East, East of England and London (67%). With Oxford, Cambridge and London Universities producing a cluster of activity nucleating in and around London. 
• Synthetic biology start-up companies have raised over £620m of public (£56m) and private (£564m) investment in the UK since 2010. 

Dr. Stephen Chambers, CEO of SynbiCITE, commented that “Confirming the arrival of a new innovation ecosystem demands evidence: proof that variables ranging from investment, pipeline infrastructure, to talent and education are established and stable. We believe the industry has reached a critical mass of companies, showing a healthy churn of attrition and creation. Roughly 76% of all the start-ups founded in the survey period are still active and with the continuation of an effective national strategy in the future, this ecosystem will undoubtedly thrive, creating jobs and wealth while sustaining the UK’s leading role in the field.”

East of England emerged as the region with the highest number of synthetic biology start-ups after London, with spin-offs concentrated around the OpenPlant partner locations of Cambridge and Norwich. 

Read More >>

Download Report [PDF, 4MB]