A team of art and design students, guided by two scientists and an artist, wins a prestigious science-and-society award.
Here is a team that has created a splash at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The team, from the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology looked at the environmental impact of genetic engineering and the ways in which local communities can be involved in practising science. The result was a prize at the World Championship Jamboree of iGEM 2011, held at MIT on November 5-7.
International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) is a highly regarded competition held annually since 2003. In iGEM, students think about, and design, living biological systems. Previously restricted to US universities, it went international in 2006.
The 12-member Srishti team was guided by Yashas Shetty and received “basic scientific help” from Navneet Rai and Mukund Thattai of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS).
The team, composed of second-year art and design students, won the Best Human Practice prize, for postulating rules by which engineers can achieve maximal output with proper social responsibility.
The project was titled “Searching for the Ubiquitous Genetically Engineered Machines”. The team asked this question: a century in the future, today’s synthetic biology may become popular. What if bio-engineered organisms escape from labs and enter the environment? Would we then be able to evaluate how much they have spread?
The students realised that data were lacking. No one had ever researched bio-synthetic organisms in the environment. So, first they had to generate baseline data against which to compare future change.
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The team collected nearly 300 soil samples from different parts of India. They learnt to isolate DNA from soil bacteria and produce it in bulk using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. They used a specialised technique to check whether any samples contained bio-engineered organisms. No sample had them.
The team mapped all the sites from which they had collected samples. By attaching a camera to a helium balloon, they obtained aerial pictures of each site. These pictures were tagged onto each site on their sampling map, along with the molecular results of each sample from the site. They designed a soil collection kit and a BioLab from commonly available materials.
Their work led them to important questions. For instance, can science be taken to ordinary people? Can people with little exposure to science help in synthetic biology projects? The team discussed the project with people in the areas where it had collected soil samples.
Thattai and Rai have helped guide Indian teams at iGEM since 2007. Apart from this Srishti team, the researchers have worked with students from other institutes, including IIT-Bombay and the Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Pune. The Srishti team actually worked at the NCBS labs and also built a community lab to enable ordinary citizens to engage with the life sciences.
This is the second time Srishti students have won a prize at iGem. In 2009, the Srishti team won the Best Presentation Award for the Smell of Rain project in which team members cloned and created bacteria that produce the smell of freshly moistened earth. Thattai and Rai guided that team as well.
The art guidance in these art-and-science bridging projects was provided by Yashas Shetty, for many years an artist-in-residence at NCBS. The Centre regularly invites artists, historians, theatre practitioners and others to spend time on campus interacting with its scientists. Among the brighter results is this bridge-building and award-winning Srishti project.
