Principles and Practices

<aside> ⚠️ About your Documentation Make sure to document every step of the in-silico and lab experiments. Make sketches, screenshots, notes, drawings - anything that helps you - and others understand the experiment. Your Documentation should help you - and others - to understand the topic. Don’t be afraid to add things that don’t work. Show your failures - and how you did overcome them. Your Documentation should be a description of the amazing journey you are on!

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<aside> ❓ Questions? For MIT or Harvard students: [email protected]

For Global students: [email protected]

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Ethics, safety, and security are essential considerations throughout (and beyond!) this class. We have therefore designed the Class Assignment this week to give you a strong foundation, and then will ask you to reflect each week and in the design of your final project.

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Class Assignment

  1. First, describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why. This could be inspired by an idea for your HTGAA class project and/or something for which you are already doing in your research, or something you are just curious about.

Synthetic genomes for crops. They hold the potential to minimize the threat of viral infection. This has massive implications for defending against infectious disease, and can potentially result in viral immune crops, farm animals, and eventually even humans, allowing for biodefense of food supplies, preventing billions of dollars worth of food loss from disease and the externality costs of the resulting food shortages.

  1. Next, describe one or more governance/policy goals related to ensuring that this application or tool contributes to an "ethical" future, like ensuring non-malfeasance (preventing harm). Break big goals down into two or more specific sub-goals. Below is one example framework (developed in the context of synthetic genomics) you can choose to use or adapt, or you can develop your own. The example was developed to consider policy goals of ensuring safety and security, alongside other goals, like promoting constructive uses, but you could propose other goals for example, those relating to equity or autonomy.

Ensure safety of the technology for the crops, ensure biocontainment, mitigate unwanted mutations, ensure the prevention of monopolistic behavior from agriculture companies, ensure transparency and public trust (clear labeling policies).

  1. Next, describe at least three different potential governance "actions" by considering the four aspects below (Purpose, Design, Assumptions, Risks of Failure & “Success”). Try to outline a mix of actions (e.g. a new requirement/rule, incentive, or technical strategy) pursued by different "actors" (e.g. academic researchers, companies, federal regulators, law enforcement, etc). Draw upon your existing knowledge and a little additional digging, and feel free to use analogies to other domains (e.g. 3D printing, drones, financial systems, etc.).