Subsections of Celine — HTGAA Spring 2026
Homework
Weekly homework submissions:
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
I. Biological engineering application(s) Plant to Plant Communication Proposal description My idea is to biodesign an Arabidopsis thaliana that can reliably emit consistent and repeatable sound patterns by editing the MLS10 gene.
Subsections of Homework
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
I. Biological engineering application(s)
Plant to Plant Communication
Proposal description
My idea is to biodesign an Arabidopsis thaliana that can reliably emit consistent and repeatable sound patterns by editing the MLS10 gene.
If a pattern can be received and reproduced by a plant, that means that theoretically a message could be transported by one plant to another, creating a new way to transport data . Also, it would be very cool.
II. Governance Policy Goals
Goal 1: Environmental and Ecological Safety
Ensure that engineered plant does not contain any other new defect and disrupt existing ecosystem or create unintended environmental consequences.
Goal 2: Dampen sound related disruptions
Ensure that sound expressed is not disruptive to existing wildlife.
III. Potential Governance “Actions”
Action 1:
Regulatory containment
- Purpose : Ensure that plant do not have ability to multiply past controllable parameters
- Design: Suppression of LEAFY to give stable floral sterility
- Assumptions : MSL10 and LEAFY can both be edited successfuly at the same time
- Risks of Failure : Accidental release of plant that makes programmed sound that will harm wildlife
- Success: Ensure containement of plant
Action 2:
Non harmful sound patterns
- Purpose: Make sure that new plant will not give out harmful sounds
- Design: Study of stress signal patterns and reaction to different sound stimuli
- Assumptions: There are harmless or neutral sound pattern that exist
- Risks of Failure: All sounds affect its environnement in negative ways
- Success: Discovery of whole free channel of communication
Action 3:
Regulatory prevention of misuse of discovery
- Purpose: Plant stress soundwave discovery might be weaponised against farmers and other ecosystem
- Design: Selective publishing of research
- Assumptions There is a harmful universal soundwave
- Risks of Failure : Soundwave gets discovered anyways
- Success : No plant warfare
IV.
| Does the option: | Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enhance Biosecurity | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| • By preventing incidents | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| • By helping respond | |||
| Foster Lab Safety | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| • By preventing incident | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| • By helping respond | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Protect the environment | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| • By preventing incidents | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| • By helping respond | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Other considerations | |||
| • Minimizing costs and burdens to stakeholders | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| • Feasibility? | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| • Not impede research | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| • Promote constructive applications | 3 | 3 | 3 |
V.
Create a committee to screen early signs of disruptions within the experiments.