Team:UCL/Practice/Documentary

EXPLANATORY VIDEO

GEM Cells In Plasticine Stop-Motion

Communicating ideas in synthetic biology is often difficult, not only because public understanding of the field is limited but because the field is necessarily cross-disciplinary since it tries to apply genetic engineering techniques as new solutions to diverse array of different problems. When making an explanatory video, it is important to be aware of the public perception. For example, genetic engineering is often seen unfavorably with its reputation in genetically modified foodstuffs and fears over eugenics. Neuroscience can cause unease because brain tampering, even for medical purposes, sounds dangerous especially if the method in question seems opaque and amoral to the layman. Our aim in making this short video was to convey our project, in which we fuse these two controversial fields, in a simple and engaging way that does not skimp on the science to make it as translucent and informative as possible. We chose plasticine stop animation because of its simplistic, unassuming, fun feel.

DOCUMENTARY

Interviewing Top Scientists

We are in the process of putting together a documentary on 'neuro-genethics' which will appear on this website later this month. The narrator's script for our documentary can be found here. We also conducted three interviews as a part of our filming process, which have proved invaluable into informing and improving our project work.

We are in the process of putting together a documentary on 'neuro-genethics' which will appear on this website later this month. The narrator's script for our documentary can be found here. We also conducted three interviews as a part of our filming process, which have proved invaluable into informing and improving our project work.

Professor Patrick Haggard - A prominent figure in neuroethical debate, Patrick Haggard is is a neuroscientist at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Department of Psychology, University College London (UCL). His interests lie in voluntary action, and so the question of whether or not we have 'free will', as well as how the brain represents an individual's body within themselves, and so the question of selfhood.

Professor Stephen Hart - Stephen Hart works on gene therapy at Wolfson Centre for Gene Therapy of Childhood Disease, UCL. We contacting him for interview because we wanted to discuss methods of gene delivery to the brain that could be incorporated into the clinical theory behind our genetic circuit. By pure serendipity we found that he and his research team had developed a method of transfecting microglia in vivo using lipid-peptide nanocomplexes. Interestingly, this result of his was un-expected as his team had been trying to transfect cancerous cells in rat brains. Their unintended discovery is a great boon for our idea. It is a great example of how our synthetic neurobiological treatment could be brought to the clinic, and selectively target microglia and could be used to develop microglia as a chassis for gene and drug delivery.