6pm-8pm
Tuesday 10th November
YE OLDE BEVERLIE
St Stephen’s Green, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7JU
Dr Kirsty Horsey, Katia Neofytou, School of Law, University of Kent
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction (CISoR)
The session will be moderated by:
Dr. Pamela White
School of Law, University of Kent
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction (CISoR)
A light buffet will be provided
Thanks to the University of Kent Public Engagement with Research Fund
CAFÉ SCIENTIFIQUE
Designer babies: One step further on the slippery slope?
6pm-8pm
Tuesday 13th October
YE OLDE BEVERLIE
St Stephen’s Green, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7JU
Professor Darren K Griffin
Professor of Genetics, School of Biosciences, University of Kent, Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction (CISoR)
Darren was one of the originators of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and continues to work on it to this day. In this talk he will discuss some of the history behind the term “designer babies” and how the most recent technology may mean that the stuff of science fiction may be closer than you think. What do you think about it? Come and have your say!
The session will be moderated by: Professor Sally Sheldon, Professor of Law, School of Law, University of Kent, Deputy Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction (CISoR)
A light buffet will be provided
Thanks to the University of Kent Public Engagement with Research Fund
On 5th September members of CISoR took over Woolf College for an extravaganza entitled “SEX AND DRUGS AND IVF.” A Café Scientifque session started with Martin Warren, Professor of Biochemistry, and a talk entitled “Inheritance of the royal malady” where he gave an account of a study of porphyria and haemophilia in the royal family. Martin revealed some of the science behind what was wrong with King George III and how recent studies are looking at his DNA. Dr Sarah Johns gave us “An Evolutionary Sex Education Lesson” while Sarah Norcross, Director of Progress Educational Trust told us emphatically why it is NOT three parent IVF. Darren Griffin, Professor of Genetics, covered some of the history and anecdotes of the 25 years of PGD from the humblest of beginnings to what has now become a multi-million dollar industry and the talks concluded with Robbie Sutton, Professor of Social Psychology telling us about sexist beliefs in female superiority and their surprising consequences. Aside from the talks, works by the key members of CISoR were on display as posters including Nick Newton-Fisher’s “Promiscuous females travel for sex” and Robin Mackenzie’s “Sex with robots.”
Visitors took a stroll around and visited our various booths and stalls where several of our friends from industry were visiting such as Brand (with their “pipetting challenge”), Cytocell (with their “FISHing” game), Digital Scientific, Research Instruments and “JSR Genetics” from the pig breeding industry. Many had a go at our famous “sperm toss” game and met, in person, some of the birds that we study (including falcons and parrots).
The seminar rooms were also full of a wide range of activities. These included “Lab Rejects” (Dr Dan Lloyd). This mini exhibition celebrated a series of these that had recently become obsolete by mining their recent history, exploring their use, and understanding the technological advances that have rendered them Lab Rejects. Gina Glover’s Art in A.R.T artwork was on display including playful explorations of the biomedical sciences. Andy Birtwistle’s “Laboratory Film” was shown that captures the laboratory environment in vivid, revealing and
unexpected ways, following a scientist as she sets up her own PCR-based experiment. The meeting marked the unveiling of YouNome by Keith Robinson a unique science- art collaboration designed to engage, educate and inspire the general public about ‘personalized genomics’. Keith produced 25 self-portraits, each representing the 24 human chromosomes (plus mitochondrial DNA) by altering his self-image. Keith aims to facilitate genetic understanding and reference art history, popular culture and effects on the viewer. The Vice Chancellor Julia Goodfellow and her husband Peter Goodfellow (a leading geneticist) got the YouNome treatment with their own personalised versions.
Members of the Griffin lab also demonstrated their trade showing visitors what goes on inside an IVF lab. With the help of the London Women’s Clinic they created an “IVF experience” to give the public a little bit of an insight into how to visualize and move embryos. In the “DNA lab” the public learned about themselves at the most fundamental level – the cell, They had fun with doing some hands-on biology and tried their hand at isolating DNA, the substance that makes every one of us who we are.
The unexpectedly low numbers did not dampen the spirits of those that attended and pictures from the day can be found here.
Adrian Podoleanu, Professor of Biomedical Optics at the University of Kent, has received a prestigious international award.
Further details to be found in the following link.
The University of Kent has recently been successful in receiving funding to work with three new partners through the Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme (KTP).
Further details to be found in the following link
In a recent hat-trick of papers, Nicholas Newton-Fisher has challenged the way we see the mating strategies of our nearest primate relatives.
Mating strategies can be defined as sets of decisions that animals make to maximize their reproductive success. For males, the main issue is adapting these strategies to gain access to females in a way that optimizes their chances of becoming a father, preferably many times over. For chimps, Nick makes the point that, although many people have looked at mating strategies, few have looked at the most fundamental problem that mating strategies need to solve, that is finding mates in the first place. One exception to this is “Dunbar’s general model” of male mating strategies, which suggests that males in most populations of chimpanzees pursue a ‘roving’ strategy: that is, looking for and isolating fertile females who are responsive to their advances. Nick argues that the way chimpanzee behaviour is considered uses this model as a starting assumption suggesting that it both functions to monitor the female reproductive state and to deter these females from other groups of males.
This may be erroneous, however, as it seems to contradict current observations of chimpanzee behaviour and Nick has proposed a radical alternative: namely that the females do the roving in order to indulge in promiscuous mating. It seems that the poor males can’t prevent the females from mating with other males, and Nick proposes that they instead maximize the number of mating opportunities by focusing their behaviour on trying to counter threats to health, fertility and reproduction. They spend a lot of their time grooming one another, probably to reduce their stress levels. Indeed, it seems that it only makes sense for males of the lowest social status to adopt a roving strategy, and then only as a ‘best of a bad job’ alternative when faced with high levels of competition.
In other words, by and large male chimpanzees should not search for mates; rather they search for one another, for food, and occasionally for rivals in other communities.
Trade or “persuade”?
In a second paper, Nick and his colleague Stefano Kaburu from Parma, Italy develop these ideas further introducing the concept of biological market theory. This imagines Darwinian natural selection as a marketplace in which animals are viewed as traders with commodities to offer and exchange. Earlier studies of Old World monkeys suggested that grooming might be such a commodity to be traded for alternative services. The extent to which this applies to chimpanzees was unknown. Stefano and Nick looked at two communities of chimps from different populations (in Uganda and Tanzania) and considered differences in various factors including the dominance hierarchy, which can vary considerably within and across communities. They found evidence that males trade grooming for agonistic support where communities are more ‘despotic’ but not where they are more ‘egalitarian’. Regardless of the nature of the hierarchy however, they found that grooming was reciprocated among males of different social status.
In third and final paper, Stefano and Nick observed the same East African chimpanzees and found evidence in the more despotic Ugandan population that male aggression towards females increased the male mating success: males were coercing females. In the more egalitarian Tanzanian population, male aggression towards females did not improve their mating success. Instead, they appeared to supplement a failing strategy of coercion with one of trading: providing females with grooming in exchange for mating. By contrast, females traded sex for neither meat nor protection from male aggression. The study raises interesting questions pertaining to the willingness of female chimpanzees to trade sex for grooming. If they do that, does it compromise their fundamentally promiscuous mating strategy described above?
It seems that we have a lot still to learn about the behaviour of our “cousins” and what this tells us about our own societies.
Newton-Fisher, N.E. (2014). Roving females and patient males: a new perspective on the mating strategies of chimpanzees. Biological Reviews, 89, 256–374.
Kaburu, S. & Newton-Fisher, N.E. (2015). Egalitarian despots: hierarchy steepness, reciprocity and the grooming-trade model in wild chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes. Animal Behaviour, 99, 61–71.
Kaburu, S.S.K. & Newton-Fisher, N.E. (2015). Trading or coercion? Variation in male mating strategies between two communities of East African chimpanzees. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 69(6), 1039–1052.
On 16th and 17th June scientists from the Schools of Biosciences, Anthropology & Conservation as well as colleagues from Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) and the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) London got together to discuss their work. The mini-symposium kicked off the third area of focus of CISoR, non-human reproduction. Taken together the talks revealed the broad and fascinating scope of animal reproduction work going on at the University.
Animals from the simplest to the most complex were covered, beginning with the humble roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Jenny Tullet (Biosciences) asked the audience to consider C. elegans as a model for organismal ageing and development. She talked about different genetic pathways and processes that affect lifespan in several organisms and related these effects to effects on reproductive capability. Simon Harvey (CCCU) stayed with C. elegans in which he described his research identifying multiple regions of the genome that lower the ability of hybrids of different strains of C. elegans to reproduce. These are the types of effects that are important in the early stages of speciation.
Aside from worms, other invertebrates received less attention although Jim Groombridge (SAC) and Jenny Tullet did give insects a mention at some point. We quickly moved into vertebrate territory, bypassing fish and amphibians completely and looking at reptiles. Not any old reptiles however, Becky O’Connor described how she had used bioinformatic technology to look at chromosome evolution in dinosaurs. Darren Griffin (Biosciences) and Denis Larkin (RVC) also considered chromosome evolution but in birds and mammals, tracing chromosomal phylogenies and isolating regions of the genome prone to breakage during evolution.
Jim Groombridge and Simon Tollington stayed on an avian theme giving an account of their efforts to conserve Mauritius parakeets. Once one of the most endangered birds on the planet and threatened with an emerging infectious disease, Jim and Simon’s efforts have demonstrated that the negative effects of the disease outbreak on measures of reproductive fitness were surprisingly short-lived and associated with individuals that took supplemental food. Jim’s group is also investigating viral evolution in this system.
The laboratory mouse received quite some attention as Jenny showed how some of her worm work was applied to mice; this species was one of the many whose genomes had been aligned in Denis Larkin’s research. Peter Ellis (Biosciences) gave an overview of several ongoing projects, including the potential use of genetic methods in achieving efficient sex selection in agriculturally important species; and the epigenetic signals that tell cells with damaged DNA whether to repair the damage or to commit cellular suicide.
In a rare display of cross city University unity Katie Fowler joined forces with the Griffin lab (Claudia Rathje and Becki Gould) describing their collaborative work in the embryos of pigs and cattle. Using techniques first developed for humans they are adapting the technology to make food consumption and distribution a far more efficient and environmentally friendly process.
Finally we moved to primates – recently a new “living primates research group” was formed at the School of Anthropology and conservation (SAC) and Brandon Wheeler and Nick Newton-Fisher represented it. Brandon Wheeler’s “Female behavioural proceptivity functions as a probabilistic signal of fertility in a New World primate” was far more accessible than the title would suggest. He described his research using non-invasive monitoring of female reproductive hormones to study the mating strategies of wild capuchin monkeys. These studies have shown that female sexual signals convey information about the probability of ovulation, influencing male behaviour in a way that potentially allows females to both concentrate paternity in preferred males and confuse paternity among multiple males.
Nick gave an account of three recent publications studying two chimpanzee communities, a very “despotic” one in Uganda and a more egalitarian one in Tanzania. Nick has proposed a radical alternative to current thinking namely it is the females, not the males, who undergo significant roving in order to indulge in promiscuous mating. The poor males can’t keep up with all this activity so, instead maximize the number of mating opportunities by focusing their behaviour on trying to counter threats to health, fertility and reproduction, most frequently by grooming one another to reduce their stress levels.
The curry that the group enjoyed between the Tuesday and Wednesday sessions allowed for an opportunity to share common ground and explore future collaborations. It is clear that non-human research into reproduction is vibrant in the Kent area. The implications as models for humans, for conservation, food production and well as basic research into e.g. reproductive isolation are enormous.
Professor Sally Sheldon discusses the legal and moral significance of implantation.
We tend to talk about contraception and abortion as if they were two separate and readily distinguishable practices, the former preventing pregnancy and the latter ending it. This understanding has a very important effect in current British law, where a relatively permissive approach to the availability of contraception stands in stark contrast to the morally grounded, onerous criminal sanctions against abortion. Yet is the distinction between abortion and contraception really so clear cut? How and why do we make it? And is the line that we have drawn between the two morally defensible?
As a matter of biological fact, the development of human life is not characterised by bright lines. As the eminent lawyer Glanville Williams once put it ‘abstract human life does not “begin”; it just keeps going.’ A seamless biological continuum exists through the production of sperm and egg, their joining together in a process of fertilisation, the gradual development of the new entity thus created throughout pregnancy, birth, subsequent growth, eventual death and ensuing decay of the body. Defining what happens along the way as an ‘embryo’, ‘fetus’, ‘person’, ‘adult’, or ‘corpse’ requires an attempt to draw lines on the basis of criteria selected as holding significance for legal or other purposes. How and where we draw such lines is a tricky business, involving careful moral reflection informed by medical fact.
The ‘regulatory cliff edge’ between the relatively permissive regulation of contraception and the criminal prohibition of abortion relies on a line drawn on the basis of the biological event of implantation, where the fertilised egg physically attaches itself to the wall of the womb some six to twelve days after ovulation. Yet while enormous legal weight has been placed upon it, little consideration seems to have been given as to why implantation matters morally. The voluminous philosophical literature on the ethical status of the human embryo and fetus offers little support for the view that implantation is an important marker.
Further, while it might once have been suggested that implantation offers a conveniently timed moment for a necessary gear change between the appropriate regulation of contraception and abortion, this argument is difficult to sustain in the light of modern medical science. Notably, the development of new ‘contragestive’ techniques that operate around or shortly after the moment of implantation serves to muddy any clear water that might have once have been believed to lie between contraceptives and abortifacients. For example, researchers have raised the possibility of developing treatments that a woman might potentially use on a planned schedule only once in each menstrual cycle, no matter how many prior coital acts she had had over that period. Such drugs might potentially act either before or after implantation. A further possibility might be to limit the use of drugs to a few times a year, when a woman’s menstrual period is late.
While significant work remains to be done in establishing the clinical safety, efficacy and acceptability of such treatments, there are good clinical reasons to pursue this work. However, such research would be blocked by current UK law. Where drugs potentially operate after implantation, offering or using them would be likely to constitute a serious criminal offence and, if such drugs could be offered at all, they would fall within the strict requirements of our abortion law. The potential convenience and simplicity of a regimen where women could have drugs in their bathroom cabinet, ready to be used when necessary would be lost.
It might be suggested, of course, that this is all for the good: that terminating even a very early pregnancy should be treated as a morally serious matter and one that is rightly subject to strict control. However, an issue of this significance to women’s reproductive health should be decided on the basis of democratic debate, informed by current medical understandings of reproductive biology and careful reflection on the moral significance of implantation in the process of embryonic and fetal development. The current legal basis for distinguishing between contraception and abortion falls woefully short of meeting this test. Rather it is a consequence of a statutory phrase, prohibiting the ‘unlawful procurement of miscarriage’, contained in the Offences Against the Person Act (1861).
An archaic law, passed by a mid-Victorian Parliament within which women had no voice, is an indefensible basis for the regulation of health services that matter so intimately to modern women. That it should potentially operate, some one hundred and fifty years after its passage, to block the development and use of safe, effective, modern forms of fertility control provides a compelling argument for a fundamental review of this aspect of its operation. There are strong reproductive health arguments in favour of facilitating access to safe, effective technologies that operate at early gestational ages. As such, within any such review, the onus should be on those who support the use of criminal sanction to justify its deployment in this context and, specifically, to explain why it offers an appropriate response at such an early stage of pregnancy.
Access Professor Sheldon’s full paper, in in the Journal of Medical Ethics, here.