Our team values equality and opportunity for all. We are a high school team based in a nonprofit community lab in Cambridge, MA, BOSLab. Due to this, we’ve had tangible experiences in fielding the difficulties of coordinating individuals across a broad metropolitan area, to complete lab work. So basic logistics are a significant barrier for the community. Due to our value and drive to collaborate, we adopted many strategies for organizing and coordinating work. These include setting up team meeting timings that maximize attendance, such as weekends or late weekday timings. We are considerate of different area-based students and their proximity to the lab and make sure to organize the team accordingly. Many of our team members are further from the lab than others and wouldn’t be able to come in at any time such as a weekday night. For these students who needed to come into the lab, organizing ridesharing and utilizing public transit with coordination for similarly based members has been a help. We worked with our mentors to figure out timings for lab supervision in advance so they could plan their days accordingly with their jobs as well as manage lab meetings with the rest of the BOSLab community. 

Another major hurdle to high school and community labs is hazardous waste disposal. As such, protocol modifications are important to adapt to unconventional lab spaces. In our case, gel fixing solution avoids disposal concerns. For more information, reference our safety page. These precautions allowed us to continually come in and work on our project in a safe environment.

Since we are all in high school, this competition and our team’s participation and efforts have allowed many students to be exposed to synthetic biology, science, and the many skills that come with it. The competition was a very good opportunity to learn science and synthetic biology hands-on as well as organizing, management, and team collaboration skills. 

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We started a team that includes numerous schools that did not have individual teams and are focusing on recruitment through our community lab to continue offering iGEM access to individuals without institutional support. We also put in significant effort in interviewing individuals to curate information on heparin through HP interviews. We talked to people around the world with numerous backgrounds from Switzerland to Boston and pharmacists to rabbis. For more information reference our Human Practice page. Through our outreach and educational activities we’ve expanded synthetic biology and science through podcasts, science fairs, a GMO conversation, the Biobuilder workshop, local outreach to middle schoolers, and our Bioethics handbook.
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We talked with numerous religious groups to gain an understanding of how our product would fit in this diverse world, including kosher communities. One such expert we talked to was a hospital pharmacist. We learned more about patient care as well as broader issues in drug manufacturing and the pharmaceutical industry. We gained a deeper understanding of anticoagulants, particularly Heparin, which is frequently used in both everyday and acute cases, especially in emergency and invasive surgeries. However, Heparin also carries a risk of contamination. The feedback we received suggested that alternatives to traditional Heparin could be safer and more reliable if manufactured domestically. However, challenges include cost, ensuring non-pathogenic production, and managing patient risks. We were advised to consult with members of the Pharmacy and Therapeutics committee of a large healthcare system to further evaluate the safety, benefits, and costs of synthetic Heparin. We have incorporated this advice into our project. We talked with a rabbi, who provided insights into the viewpoint of kosher following/Jewish communities. Rabbi Flax discussed different laws and exceptions such as the value of saving life trumping other kosher laws. We learned much about the Jewish Community and the various positions within it. Our team gained insights into what the tenets of Judaism are and what is based on religious text. We took away the diverse schools of thought within the Jewish community, the different laws that are followed, the overall strong belief in the value of life, as well as the reactions of the community to previous synthetic products such as insulin. We have noted the information learned during this conversation and incorporated it into our project. Visit our human practice page to get more info.  We also surveyed our team’s iGEM adjacent community such as family members or peers that are not knowledgeable about medications and science in general to better understand public perspectives on heparin. We understood the need for education in the general community and what their overall opinions were about the idea of synthesized heparin. Our conversations with bioethicists, surgeons, and pharmacists helped us understand the medical aspects and perspectives of more knowledgeable people. 

We have included future directions for any heparin-focused team, including Human Practice and wet-lab focuses. We would recommend future teams to reach out to many different people with diverse knowledge for interviews. We believe that talking to heparin patients and those most directly impacted by the heparin crisis would’ve given us a unique lens looking into this problem. Talking to patient advocacy groups also would be an interesting angle to tackle this. To future teams: It is important to approach the problem from many different angles. This topic can be sensitive to some groups of people, and it is important to be aware of that when approaching the interviews. Respecting the identities of the interviewee will help you create a more respectful and honest relationship, which can help you find their true thoughts on the matter. Start early with the documenting process, and use AI tools, like Zoom’s transcription feature. Take copious notes on all of the interviews, and make sure that you record the clear takeaways from each one. Any notable quotes and points will make the documents more engaging for the reader as well. Finally, read through our Bioethics Handbook. This handbook has a lot of information about the bioethics side of our project, and keeping this information in the back of your mind as you tackle this process will prove beneficial later in the project.

Looking at any problem requires diverse sets of lenses to truly understand how it affects each and every person in society and the world. Our project aimed to tackle that issue, as we collected opinions from people around the world of different backgrounds, nationalities, and identities. When talking to various perspectives, our project grew both in richness and in quality. We added nuance and professionalism, infinitely improving the standard. We believe that inclusivity is one of the most important parts of any project, as understanding a diverse range of perspectives gives the group a proper understanding of the topic at hand. Creating a solution just based on 5 people living in the United States isn’t sufficient enough; recording ideas from around the world, from people with different backgrounds, etc. creates a more complete perspective on the project, and solidifies the credibility of our project in the process. Inclusivity served as a huge part of our project, and we hope that all projects in the future think of inclusivity in the same way as well.