<p>Another safety measurement option is either a genetic modification added so that the <strong> seeds are not viable </strong> or make a <strong>hybrid seed </strong>, so the resulting plant is infertile. These methods haves been applied before by companies like Monsanto and raised many ethical questions most mostly due to their commercial model. [10]</p>
<p>Another safety measurement option is either a genetic modification added so that the <strong> seeds are not viable </strong> or make a <strong>hybrid seed </strong>, so the resulting plant is infertile. These methods haves been applied before by companies like Monsanto and raised many ethical questions most mostly due to their commercial model. [10]</p>
<p>When we were thinking about uncertainties related to GMOs, we were told by RIVM that the EU directive … [] requires that risks are reassessed every 10 years after a product is on the market, this means <strong>monitoring of the cultivated GM crop </strong> to check unforeseeable affects must be applied. To have more meaningful data and to be able to track the spread of the genetic material of our GM crop we thought to engineer a marker into our host plant and our nitroplast. This could be important also for traceability of our GM crop in the food chain. []</p>
<p>When we were thinking about uncertainties related to GMOs, we were told by RIVM that the EU directive … [] requires that risks are reassessed every 10 years after a product is on the market, this means <strong>monitoring of the cultivated GM crop </strong> to check unforeseeable affects must be applied. To have more meaningful data and to be able to track the spread of the genetic material of our GM crop we thought to engineer a marker into our host plant and our nitroplast. This could be important also for traceability of our GM crop in the food chain. []</p>
<divclass="h2">Ownership and IP, accessibility/ Or Social Impact</div>
<divclass="h2">Ownership and IP, accessibility/ Or Social Impact</div>
<divclass="h2">Legislation and regulations in the European Union</div>
<p><strong>‘Thinking of ownership, patenting and who will use and how our GM seed product is part of responsible innovation. </strong>’ We were curious how we can manage these questions responsibly. dr. Zoë Robaey explained that the question of patenting always comes when we think about GM seeds. We wanted to design our idea accessible so the ones in need can benefit from it like farmers that don’t have access to mineral fertilizer [11] or for farmers or governments that could use it in regions where reactive nitrogen emissions are a big threat for the environment</p>
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<p>However, the first question who is going to bear the costs of the development of nitroplast seeds and what will the developers ask in return? We read about cases where the seed sector and GM seeds caused legal and ethical issues. [8], [12] Zoe emphasised the problem by raising the question if only rich farmers can pay for our technology, ‘we just create a new socio-economic problem.’ We know that the development of such nitrogen fixing plants is costly and would take at least tens of years of research [13]. So how do we make this seed available at a reasonable price that farmers could benefit? Zoë Robaey suggested that ‘We should make our design in a way that it gives something to both farmers (the public) and the ones that create it’. This could be achieved by implementing an appropriate ownership model or by developing partnerships and cooperating with public actors. However, we must select the plant we want to engineer and look who are in charge of that crop</p>
<p>Thinking about ownership is important not just because of the value accessibility but also when it comes to thinking about responsibility. Zoë Robaey in her review paper ‘Rethinking ownership of genetically modified seeds’ describes that preventing costs and consequences from the uncertain risks of GM seeds can be achieved by a different set- up in the distribution of rights and responsibilities then current usual ones where solely a company owns the seed with a patent on it. Difference can be achieved by involving users like farmers and not just scientists or the company that created the GM seed as owners and by stating that all users have forward looking moral responsibility to reduce environmental and societal risks from the use of the GM seed. Key point here is that owners have access to knowledge about the seed and to create cooperation among different owners. Zoë mentioned that the case of the introduction of GM eggplant in Bangladesh is a good example for a alternative ownership model where GM seeds are indeed owned by multiple actors at the same time as the pest resistant technology was donated to a public research institute, and the seeds were given to farmers. Additionally, farmers can keep and re-use seeds, may be even continue breeding them. [14], [15]</p>
<p>For implementing an adequate ownership model for our project, is a similar one that happened in Bangladesh. Another possibility could be that we patent our technology so there is return for our investment, but we also provide free licences to potential partners which could be NGOs or local research or breeder institutes. A good example for this model how Wageningen University handled there CRISPR Cas technology. [16]</p>
<p>Additionally, a different approach that Zoë brought up is to make our project open source. This is a relevant idea because of the scope of this project thus collaborations between different research groups is needed. This way there would be free access to information on how to develop such nitrogen-fixing plant trait and the trait could be faster adapted by researchers to different local weather conditions in different crop varieties and the needs of farmers. This way the return on investment could be managed by donations or partnerships. One example of such an open source is the iGEM wiki. An idea is that we can use the iGEM wiki as an open-source platform to help people learn from our project. There has been other attempt for adopting the open-source model for seeds such as the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), which is an organisation dedicated to maintaining fair and open access to plant genetic resources. An option is to adopt the license of the Open Source Initiative for our project.</p>
<p>We also learned from talking with Zoë Robaey that for the social impact of our project traceability of the nitroplast GM plant is very important. Traceability is relevant for food safety and environmental safety. To detect our GM plant easily one approach could be to engineer the expression of a marker gene that would be more abundant so it’s detection would be easier.</p>
<divclass="h2">Legislation and regulations in the European Union</div>
<p>When talking with Amrit Nanda, she advised us that if we want to implement our idea we should focus outside of Europe. There have been very strict rules on genetically modified organisms (GMO) since the 2000s and after the adoption of the GMO Directive, no GM plant variety has been approved for cultivation in the EU. On the other hand, we were curious what new regulations could be proposed to change that situation to bring our idea to Europe? Amrit explained that in the EU, the approach to starts from the perspective that a GMO has potential risks on the environment and health and the benefits are not looked at. It is very expensive and cumbersome to conduct enough studies to prove that the new GMO does not pose a risk. Therefore, small companies cannot afford to create GM plants for example that could be useful for society. It is important to mention that we are talking about cultivation here, not import. The EU imports a lot of GM plant products. However for cultivation, there is only one GM plant variety grown in EU and only in Spain and Portugal.</p>
<p>What could be improved is that the focus moves from the technology used, to looking at the final product: the plant variety. The benefits of the variety should be given more emphasis. Good examples of enabling legislation can be found in many non-EU countries, including the USA and Canada. In this way it could be possible for smaller companies to also develop GMOs for the EU market.</p>
<p>We asked the question <strong>How to possibly bring about change </strong>? After the conversation with Amrit, we concluded that people should rely more on science and understand the benefits so less opposition would be there to change the strict GMO rules in the EU and its member states. This means there should be more science-communication between research and society. When we asked how we should communicate our projects she said ‘the benefits should be mentioned first. We need to say what can our project help achieve and why does it matter, and why it wouldn’t work with what we already have. People are open to genetic modification if it’s for a greater good.’</p>
<p>We also asked how farmers approach the GM crops in Europe. Farmers are generally not against the notion of GMOs (the ethical side). The possible opposition is more about the ‘practical side than the concept’. The main interest for farmers is the benefits of the plant variety e.g., more resistance to disease or drought. It would be of interest for farmers if we prove that we can reduce the price of cultivation by reducing the fertilizer needed, but only if the price of the seeds was still affordable compared to yield. However, GM plant products need to be processed and separated from non-GMOs because of the traceability and labelling requirements in the EU. This adds extra costs and makes it difficult to sell, as processors and retailers do not want to use or sell such products.</p>
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<divclass="h"id="seven">
<divclass="h1">Final Implementation</div>
<divclass="h1">Final Implementation</div>
<p>From the discussions and elaborations on different values and impacts we came to some points and designs that we can implement in our idea. Instead of having a final product in our project we are elaborating on a roadmap with the essential steps to create our imagined nitrogen-fixing crop. Our experiments are telling information about the beginning of two steps of this roadmap as a foundation for future research lines. Therefore most of the applicable ideas in our IHP work are relevant for a potential product, which we thought to be GM seeds potential plant genetic trait. These ideas tell us about how we imagine to mitigate risks that could be social or legal, or environmental problems when this future product is developed. We believe that our idea could serve as a solution for sustainable farming regarding the nitrogen problem. However, we are aware it could be very hard to get a viable crop plant that successfully incorporates the nitroplast and needs less fertilizer than the current breeds while maintaining sufficient yields. Therefore, based on the conversation with KWS Seeds, we thought of an alternative approach that could potentially more easily lead to the same result. Additionally further approaches are also discussed. </p>
<p>Note: in this section some part the term nitroplast is used in general for a nitrogen-fixing organelle, but in other parts of our wiki it solely refers to UCYN-A</p>
<divclass="h2">Safety</div>
<divclass="h2">Safety</div>
<p>To reduce the environmental impact of such nitrogen-fixing crops we thought of the following implementations we can make in our design.</p>
<divclass="h3">Blasting (bioinformatics)</div>
<divclass="h3">Blasting (bioinformatics)</div>
<p>Since Candidatus Atelocyanobacterium thalassa (UCYN-A) the nitrogen fixing organelle also referred to as ‘nitroplast’ and B.bigelowii are not well studied organisms not much are known about their genome and expressed proteins. However, for a market application all genes and inserts need to be characterized and also after successfully transforming the host organism examining the genetic information surrounding the inserted genes are also necessary. Using bioinformatics tools, we would look for toxicity for example or for possible mutations in the inserted genes and around the genes This could be relevant for environmental and food safety as well. Additionally, this could also help assess if the plant would perform or be similar to the wild type.</p>
<divclass="h3">Test for crossing</div>
<divclass="h3">Test for crossing</div>
<p>In order to make sure that the GM crop cannot spread easily in the environment we imagine doing crossing tests with closer or further wild type relatives to our plant. This is important because the spreading of inserted genes is unwanted due to the unpredictable the effects on the ecosystem are.</p>
<divclass="h3">Non-reproducing seeds</div>
<divclass="h3">Non-reproducing seeds</div>
<p>Since no engineering method for the containment of more complex GM organisms exist – such as kill-switches or containment in a gel for microorganisms – a possible solution for the spreading of our plant is non-viable seeds. However, this could raise ethical problems since farmers would have to buy seeds every year so they would be vulnerable to the seed provider company and this could lead to exploitation. Also traditional farming practices are violated. On the other hand note that many farmers are using hybrid seeds that are not GMOs and these seeds need to rebought every year as well to produce high yields.</p>
<divclass="h3">Viable on itself or non-viable nitroplast?</div>
<divclass="h3">Viable on itself or non-viable nitroplast?</div>
<p>A big question related to safety that came up during our interview with Max van Hooren is that should the nitroplast survive on its own outside the host or not? This is a relevant question because if the nitroplast could survive on its own, that means it doesn’t require proteins and enzymes imported from the host plant cell. This means that there might be a way to only change the plant cell genetic material and not introduce foreign genes. Therefore the trans-genes (genes from non-relative species) will only be in the nitroplast in a contained organelle. Most important consequence of this would be that no foreign genetic material will be spread by pollen hence the nitroplast assembly would only be inherited by the germplasm similar to mitochondria or chloroplast. This would not only make the environmental risk assess less complicated but would significantly reduce the possible risks of cross pollination between native relatives. It must be mentioned that it might occur that genes are adopted by the host cell from the nitroplast as observed before in plastids. [Balint citation] This design would go along with the suggestion of KWS Seed scientist to choose a less dependent cyanobacteria candidate for a potential nitroplast so the cumbersome and difficult introduction and expression of the many essential proteins that UCYN-A must import is not necessary.</p>
<p>The other side of the story on the other hand is that if the nitroplast is independent from the host, there is a chance that it can survive outside the plant for example in the soil and potentially spread in the environment. This could have many consequences one for example the alteration of soil microbial communities that also effects the wellbeing of plants. One solution to the spreading of a less host-dependant nitroplast is engineering a kill switch so when it gets out of the host cell somehow, due to the change of the environment or the lack of nutrient the nitroplast starts a cell death mechanism. From the engineering part (incorporation of the nitroplast by fusion) the size problem must be considered as well since other cyanobacteria species are in general bigger than UCYN-A.</p>
<divclass="h3">Engineer marker</div>
<divclass="h3">Engineer marker</div>
<p>STOP HERE FOR NOW</p>
<p>We thought of a marker that we would introduce into our GM seed that the plant contains when growing, so we can track better the spread of the genetic material in the environment and the GM seed in the food chain. The marker can be introduced either in the host cell or to the nitroplast organelle itself. The uTP sequence we came up with and tried to test during our project could a marker that indicates the spread of the transgenes introduced into the crop.</p>
<divclass="h2">Ownership</div>
<divclass="h2">Ownership</div>
<divclass="h3">Giving access to non-profit partners</div>
<divclass="h3">Giving access to non-profit partners</div>
