One of our aspects of human practices consisted of reaching out to various professionals and people in our community to help us gauge a better understanding of our project’s reach. Our project is meant to detect TPA in order for the monitoring of PET degradation. The stakeholders in our project include people in our local community who frequent the beach, research professionals specializing in PET degradation, and environmentalists. We reached out to a variety of people to ensure we had representative data that allows us to gain a greater understanding on PET degradation, and how the detection of TPA will allow us to better monitor it, and the benefits it may bring. All in all, through human practices, we hoped to create a viable solution using synthetic biology in order to detect TPA to enable us to monitor PET degradation. We wish to advocate for the health of our ecosystem by informing the people in our community, and make a difference for generations to come.
In the first part of our human practices, we created a survey, which included questions about PET degradation, the impacts of it, plastic use, and recycling. This survey was meant to assess how many people in our community were truly aware of the harmful impacts of plastic, and the usage of it in our communities. This was especially important to us as we do live in the coastal city of San Diego, making the beach a frequent place for both locals and tourists to visit, and it is often hit hard by the use of plastics. (Further explained on our survey page)
In the second part of our human practices, we reached out to various professionals in research areas pertaining to our project in order to gain their input on the viability and practicality of our project. After talking with them, we gained more insight on how plastics in the water may contribute to harm in our ecosystem, but also the possible benefits of monitoring PET degradation. In addition, we were able to understand the extent of PET’s harm, thus supporting the importance of our project. We interviewed five experts in the field, Dr. Mark Pellet, Dr. Lara Khosla, Dr. Christopher Johnson, Dr. Sonu Kumar, and Dr. Ramesh Jha, to get feedback on how to better improve our project and make it more accessible for public use. We were advised on our scientific process by scientists who have previously worked with mucK, guided by experts in computational modeling, and discussed the applications of our research for the current issues surrounding plastic pollution in the community. (More details on our attributions page)
We developed a guidebook depicting the importance of recycling, as well as outlining different methods. Our guidebook aims to emphasize recycling in daily lives. This includes a printable, easy-to-use recycling guide which we distributed throughout our community and school. In addition to this, our team published a children’s book called “Perry the Plasmid” to educate future generations on synthetic biology and plasmids in a fun, and interactive way.
Our team also put together a symposium for local community members. We presented our project idea, as well as provided them with a useful recycling guide. Our goal was to educate them on the importance of our project, as well as recycling. We recognize that most recycling guides are often difficult to comprehend, so we wanted to use this as an opportunity to simplify it!
In addition to this, we hosted a summer camp to provide synthetic biology opportunities to younger children. Our Forensic Summer Camp made learning biology fun for young kids, they were able to conduct pH tests, identify missing powders using chemical properties, and solubility tests. We aimed to provide them with an interactive lesson, allowing them to explore this complex, fun field! You can view more about our efforts in educating our community at our education tab: