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From 2011.igem.org

Safety issues
·  Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:

• researcher safety,
• public safety, or
• environmental safety?

Actually no.

From the aspect of the project idea itself, none of the new genes or techniques we used would raise safety issues. We are going to carry out the plasmid engineering and gene knock out techniques, which are common uses of E. Coli in almost every lab around the world and have been accepted by society and public for a long time. According to the Biosafety manual of the World Health Organization, the strains we are going to use such as BL21 (gold) PLYS AG belong to the “Risk Group 1”, and “Biosafety Level 1 – basic”. So there is a very low potential that our members, the public or environment will be harmed by our bacteria. The safety of recombinant E. Coli might be the most unpredictable problem in every similar project. However, the gene recombined in E. Coli all originate from other strains of E. Coli or this K-12 strain, such as recA, recN, CheZ, trkD, ag43, it is much safer than using gene of different species. At the same time, the channel absorbing cesium is previously used to absorb potassium in natural environment so that little negative effect could be made.

From the aspect of our members, each of our iGEM team members was required to attend a pre-lab training led by graduate students and advisors both on experimental skills and safety instructions before he or she actually started to do the iGEM program in the lab. All of us are aware of the potential harmfulness to the researcher, the public and the environment. The radiation-related experiment will be carried out with the presence of the teacher or technician with radiation-usage permission. We have also carefully established safety rules in the lab and placing extra stress on properly handling bacteria, plasmids and nucleotide-related reagents to prevent undesirable spread of genes into the environment.


·  Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes,

• did you document these issues in the Registry?
• how did you manage to handle the safety issue?
• How could other teams learn from your experience?

No. All the promoters, genes originate from E. coli itself and had been part of this species for a long period. There is no safety issues raised by the new BioBrick parts because they do not pose any risk to humans as well as the environment.

·  Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

• If yes, what does your local biosafety group think about your project?
• If no, which specific biosafety rules or guidelines do you have to consider in your country?

Yes. Biosafety issues are concerned by committees both of our school and the government. They have also established guidelines and policies on biosafety. We have talked and discussed the safety issue with them. They mainly concern the effect of radiation experiment. On the other hand, they emphasized the importance of the observance of fundamental laboratory rules so that the safety of the researcher, public and the environment would be guaranteed.


Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?

As far as we are concerned, requirement that every team should focus on the safety issues, especially when they are submitting the BioBrick parts may be one of the solution. More stringent requirements on the BioBrick such as the prediction of potential safety problems lead to safer engineering. Moreover, instructions and emphases on the importance and ways to measure and ensure safety are recommended to be provided through the website or during the workshop, thus maintaining an easy access to these instructional resources on biosafety.

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