As engineers, we have to be constantly aware of the ethical considerations regarding the practice and implementation of our work. Some of the key ethical considerations of our project are listed here:
Data Privacy
All the scRNA-sequencing data of human brain samples come from volunteer donors to the Allen Institute for Brain Science, in collaboration with the J. Craig Venter Institute on this project. To protect the privacy of donors and the confidentiality of the data, rigorous measures should be implemented to ensure the data stay private and anonymized.
Environmental Concerns
This project requires extensive use of supercomputers, which might potentially lead to high levels of electrical consumption and heat pollution. Running the optimal version of NSForest on the sample dataset requires approximately 30min of computational time on a supercomputer. The whole 180TB brain sample scRNA-sequencing dataset requires a much longer computational time. To limit the use of supercomputers and thus decrease potential environmental issues, the team diligently examined the workflow before each test and test on a small sample dataset first.
Proper Application
The marker genes of each cell, identified by the NSForest, are expected to be used as diagnostic tools for diseases. The evaluation of the NSForest accuracy and the access to marker genes information should be stringently regulated to ensure overall safety.
Credit: Yueshan Liang