HUMAN PRACTICES

Human Practices Overview

Collaboration and integrated Human Practices has always been of the utmost importance to our team at the University of Florida. Interacting and cooperating with other teams fosters the integration of knowledge and global communication. Our team this year did just that by collaborating with multiple teams, doctors, and even medical students. Our year as a team was engaging, entertaining, and lots of fun.

Sepsis Simulation Presentation

On June 6th, 2023, our iGEM team had the honor of hosting a medical student from Florida International University (FIU) to present his sepsis simulation. Andrew Kerwin is a third-year medical student at FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine who recently took a Hematology course. During this course, he and a fellow classmate developed a real-life hospital sepsis simulation that incorporated vital signs and common bedside symptoms indicative of septic infection. His simulation accurately mimics the manifestations of sepsis present in patients at the bedside with the goal of initiating more timely diagnosis from hospital staffing, as well as raising awareness for the signs and symptoms associated with sepsis. Kerwin’s Sepsis Simulation conveyed to our team the importance and impact that real-world understanding and application of sepsis research can have in a bedside fashion. Working alongside a student who possesses the same passion for helping others, especially those impacted by sepsis, aided in making an educational and meaningful collaboration for our team.

Collaboration with Lambert High School

One of our longest standing collaborations comes in our work with Lambert High School (Forsyth County, Georgia). This year, Lambert’s Project pertained to Heart Health. So, in assisting them with their goal of dissemination of public service announcements to educate their community and beyond, Makenna Myrick and Logan Spiegelman recorded a presentation for their CPR/AED webinar, which was held on 9/23/23. In this lecture, they discussed the basics of CPR/AED, their role in first aid procedure, and presented a generalized case study relating first aid and sepsis (heart-related symptoms, etc.) This presented a unique opportunity for our team to not only assist another in their work, but to also present a unique angle to their work that correlated with our topic of interest. (Need access to video)

Interview with Dr. Sonny

To understand how our project fits into the greater scientific body of knowledge, our team met up with Dr. Abraham Sonny, who is a researcher, assistant professor, and physician with affiliations to Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts General Research Institute, and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sonny has done incredible sepsis research, which is heavily inspired by his day-to-day work life in the hospital. Highlights from our interview can be found below:

Sepsis has been studied for quite some time. Why should we continue to do research?

Dr. Sonny: So, sepsis has been studied for a very long time. Although the syndrome itself has been explained in the last three or four decades, [it wasn’t until] the 1990’s and early 2000’s [where] there's been a lot of improvement in general care in the ICU leading to some improvement in the mortality [rates of] sepsis. I think a lot of that has initially been related to just an identification of newer antibiotics and understanding that giving fluids earlier is better…. If you look at studies on sepsis in the last two decades, the majority of the trials have failed in terms of newer therapeutics…. I think we have exhausted how much we can push in terms of process improvement, like early antibiotics, early fluids, early diagnosis of sepsis… but I think what is lacking is an understanding of why there is mortality in sepsis, we know it's primarily because of an infectious organism … [but] we don't have a good understanding of what that response is and how to modify it. I think part of it is because sepsis research has been going on for a long time and all of the labs who study sepsis are really traditional labs and don't [really] have a genomic angle.

The mortality in sepsis continues to be around 25 to 30%. It has not changed in the last one or two decades. So there's a lot of opportunities, I think.

What are the benefits of creating an in vitro model for sepsis?

Dr. Sonny: There are two things. One is understanding the mechanism of immune dysfunction. And two, how can you introduce perturbations or introduce therapies which can modify that response? The general path we take… generally for most diseases, is to identify the human phenotype and the linked cell transcript to make markers… then try to replicate that in an ex vivo model or in vitro model…. We can multiplex a lot of large scale screens, either small molecule screens, looking at differentiation or genetic screens, or CRISPR knockout screens looking at gene pattern, which might be a fronting this differentiation. These are things which you can never do in an in vivo model or in humans. The next step for us typically is to test that out in a mouse model…. So the benefit of in vitro is that you can use human cells.

Collaboration with Patras Medicine

In Light of National DNA Day on April 25th, two members of the team decided to partner with Patras Medicine (Rio, Greece) to create an educational video highlighting the scientific importance of DNA. Jessica Kuehler and Logan Speigelman participated through their recording in the instructional video that was posted on DNA Day by the Patras iGEM team as an Instagram Reel. The goal of this video was to inspire others who have a passion for science and may one day contribute to the scientific community through research methods. This collaboration was posted on social media, targeting an extensive audience with hopes of spreading the importance and understanding of DNA to a broad range of people, even outside of the scientific community.

Sepsis Awareness Month

The month of September was an important one for our iGEM team. September is sepsis awareness month and given the focus that our project has on sepsis, we felt as if it was necessary to spread awareness about the signs, symptoms, and prevention of this disease. We raised awareness on our very own campus (Gainesville, Florida) for other students that attend the University of Florida. This included passing out flyers presenting sepsis signs and symptoms and providing additional resources for students to become involved in sepsis awareness related activities and fundraising. Throughout the entire month, our team utilized our social media presence to also inform the community about sepsis. This included posting information about sepsis involvement and sepsis awareness. Our social media presence was predominantly by our team's Instagram page, which interacts with a plethora of other iGEM teams as well as the local Gainesville community. Spreading awareness for sepsis was something endearing to our team and it was important that we were able to reach local and global audiences through the use of physical information and media presentation.

Collaboration with iGEM Iisertvm

National Yoga Day falls on June 21st, and our iGEM team did not miss the celebration. Alongside iGEM Iisertvm (Kerala, India), two team members assisted with filming a video to spread the message of yoga. The Iisertvm team’s project is working to develop a diagnostic kit for clinical depression utilizing blood biomarkers. This project was of great importance to their research methods and community outreach, we were happy to play a role alongside them. This collaboration was a friendly reminder to our team members that physical exercise and mindfulness are essential to health well-being.

Collaboration with iGEM Bulgaria

On April 22nd (Earth Day), the iGEM team at UFlorida participated in a park clean-up. This park is local to Gainesville, Florida, where our team calls home. Our impact, although local, was turned global with the help of iGEM Bulgaria. Bulgaria organized a virtual Earth Day event that motivated other teams to partake in Earth Day activities and clean-ups. Our team was happy to represent the iGEM community and all of the good that it does for the world when collaborations are in effect.