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From 2013.igem.org

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Human Practices

In the human practices component of our project, we intended to learn about the professional, industrial and public perception of Genetically Modified Organisms and aim construct a marketing strategy for a Genetically Modified Yogurt. This particular approach was chosen for our project due to the consumer-based nature of our final product. First to obtain a general knowledge about the common perspectives with regards to GMOs, we will survey various professionals, people from the industry and citizens in public places. To focus and direct this survey towards our project involving a genetically modified yogurt, we will first survey various people in the dairy industry to understand the major struggles and concerns when dealing with GMOs in this industry. We will then design a survey according to the results obtained from the industry that addresses the concerns that have been raised. The professionals targeted by out survey will include professors with backgrounds in philosophy, bioethics, biology, microbiology, genetics, engineering, land and food systems, and several other fields that are not involved with or study the issue of genetic modification. We will also conduct surveys in public to better our understanding about the major concerns citizens may have with regards to consuming Genetically modify foods, and in our case, yogurt. We then began to consider human practices concerns surrounding CRISPR bacterial immunity. Due to recent discoveries with regards to the CRISPR system and scientific advances made in this field, we concluded that creating a Spacer Repository would be of benefit in assessing the potential unintended implications of these sequences. We developed a submission sample and included the information that would be necessary in the repository.

Genetically Modified Yogurt

CRISPR Space-R

The CRISPR system gains it's specificity through RNA transcribed from highly variable spacer regions that are separated by conserved repeat regions. The resulting small RNAs are used to target phage DNA and confer immunity to the bacterial host. While one of the most useful feature of CRISPR is it's easily engineered specificity, spacer regions could potentially have "off target" activity and unintended implications. We are currently in the process of building a repository for CRISPR spacer sequences for the iGEM community. Our server will host the sequences and a BLAST-pipeline that will retrieve all the possible sequences from public databases that could be targeted by the submitted spacer. Once a spacer sequence is submitted and BLAST-results are generated, a review process will take place where two anonymous iGEM teams submit a safety assessment. This will include possible societal, environmental and scientific implications of the spacer region as they relate to the possible target sequences. Moreover, this could help seed new ideas and applications with the newly designed spacers. Here is an example of a submission form for Space-R: