Bioluminescence for a cleaner chemical industry | Paige Whitehead, CEO of Nyoka

Join us for a whirlwind tour of the key problems with modern agriculture and the alternative emerging technologies. In this final episode with Agata the biocontainment researcher and Simon, Head of Human Practices, from the Wageningen iGEM team, we discuss how synthetic biology can be used as a technology to prevent crop frost damage. We reflect on using synthetic biology in agriculture and discuss common misconceptions, and the gap between scientific advancements and public perceptions behind the nascent field.

In an iGEM competition, open source interchangeable parts of genetic material (BioBricks) allow hundreds of teams of students to create synbio solutions to real world problems. Joined by captain Johannes and treasurer Niko from the 2023 Wageningen iGEM team, we discuss their challenges and ideas about creating novelty, using non-model organisms, and the importance of educating ourselves about novel technologies, not to be dissuade by fear. 

The Wageningen iGEM Team is developing a solution to prevent frost damage using synthetic biology. Listen to find out more about how frost damage affects farmers, markets and us as consumers, and how Wageningen plan the scientific aspects of their project. Get an insight into the dynamics of team work and the attitudes of aspiring scientists.

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Can you patent a newly discovered protein? Does getting a patent depend on the application? What does intellectual property encompass? Our guests, IP specialists Sara Holland and David Holt from Potter Clarkson, join us to shed light on these topics and explore why protecting biotechnological innovations is crucial. Get ready to expand your knowledge and better understand what can be considered an 'invention'.

Sebastian Cocioba is an amateur scientist  pursuing his scientific curiousities from his home lab and mentoring young scientists via Binomica Labs.
His mission is to enable agency through building open source tools and allow anyone to explore the world around them.

Coming up in this episode, we talk oceans, what lives in different benthic zones, and also about jargon and communicating science, edutainment and a small bay drone made from trash. 

Binomica Labs for science mentorship
Sebastian Cocioba on Twitter

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Sebastian Cocioba is an amateur scientist conducting research from his home lab. In our previous episode, we discussed how he's building tools for the future molecular florists.

Here and now, we take this topic further, starting with the example of a DIY directed evolution machine made cheaply. If you're an engineering student, we encourage you to make, improve and remake his designs. You'll be supporting a community of open source directed evolution machines.

In this episode, we also hear a story about one of the students Sebastian mentored: a potential future molecular florist? It's a story about a science competition, an interesting plant, how to tell a good story and more. Binomica Labs provides the wetware, hardware, and more for thoughtful experiments. We hope you like this episode.

Binomica Labs for science mentorship
Sebastian Cocioba on Twitter

Follow us for upcoming episodes!

Sebastian Cocioba is a scientist and researcher building open source tools to make research easier and cheaper. Do you, by any chance, know where the M9 media comes from and what it was originally used? Sebastian takes us on a two year journey to discover the origin paper of this medium and how he ended up falling in love with photobiology, better defining his research questions and more. We take the journey with him as he becomes a researcher for hire and starts a mentorship programme for other keen scientists with Binomica Labs; the wetware, thoughtware, hardware to help you follow your curiousities and learn about the world around you.

https://binomicalabs.org/
https://twitter.com/ATinyGreenCell

Follow us for more episodes like this: https://linktr.ee/thelivingrevolution 

Sebasian Cocioba is an independent researcher, conducting the discovery, research and more from his own home lab. This is part one of our conversation with Sebastian. He details his first experiences in science from seeing a maple leaf and thinking "I need to understand" this,  to being recruited for a start-up and learning how to build a lab from ground up. 

Stay tuned for further episodes!

Check out his Twitter for what he terms his open lab book:  https://twitter.com/ATinyGreenCell

Doing science is not a lonely endeavour. It involves collaborating with others, using your shared knowledge to find solutions to pressing problems, and pushing past the boundaries of what is known. As an EBRC council member, professor and founder of the Synthetic Biology Young Speaker series (SynBYSS), Tae Seok Moon has dedicated his time to empowering young people in science and solving pressing problems. His mission is to create GEMs (genetically engineered microbes) that can both diagnose disease/pollution and improve the circumstances of each. Imagine, for example, the bacteria in your gut. This bacteria is surprisingly important for your mood - what is known as the brain-gut (mind-gut) connection. What if we were to produce a probiotic that could tell you about the state of your mood, and also perhaps work to change it? Looking more broadly, could we remediate our environment using crafted ‘probiotics’ for the soil? Biosecurity an biosafety are very important for solutions involving GEMs. The Moon lab has developed a stable CRISPR-based kill switch mechanism that works in multiple microbes, ensuring that they only work in their specified environment.
 
Working together with other scientists across disciplines has been vital to creating solutions that work. Our conversation took a turn down how to ensure interdisciplinarity in projects and about how young people in science should be empowered and supported. Tae Seok Moon runs SynBYSS. In these weekly seminars, the early-stage rising stars in science have the stage for thirty minutes to showcase their research, whilst the more senior scientists give brief five minute talks. This style inverts the current standards and gives early-stage researchers and post-docs a chance to present their work. If you know a rising star, the contact details are below. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Tae Seok Moon social media handles:

Twitter: @Moon_Synth_Bio

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/tae-seok-moon-12515b23

SynBYSS: https://www.youtube.com/@taeseokmoon7442/videos

Stable CRISPR-based kill switches: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28163-5

Synthetic Biology Young Speaker’s Series: https://ebrc.org/synthetic-biology-young-speaker-series-synbyss/

Making Space for young speakers: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41589-022-01001-x

Probiotics for the soil: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167779922002281

Engineering Biology for Climate and Sustainability: https://roadmap.ebrc.org/engineering-biology-for-climate-sustainability/

Dr. Clarice D. Aiello is a quantum engineer interested in how quantum mechanics informs biology. She fearlessly leads the Quantum Biology Tech (QuBiT) Lab in UCLA where she explores if spin physics can account for relevant biosensing and be used to develop technologies. Quantum Biology is a nascent field in both physics and biology and much collaboration is needed to bridge the gap between both fields. Although the data of Quantum mechanics in biology is correlative, research has not been able to prove the functional relevance of quantum effects such as an electron’s spin to manipulate physiological outcomes. Possibly in the future we will be able to tailor magnetic fields to drive cell activities, treat injuries, drive stem cell regeneration, or manipulate cell fate decisions in embryonic stem cells.