• Risk-assessment of our project
1. Instrumentation.
2. Chemical risk-assessment.
3. Biological risk-assessment.
1. Microorganisms.
2. Used biobriks Parts.
1. Evaluation methods of the biobricks parts.
2. Pathogenicity, Infectivity and Toxicity.
4. Environmental impact.
• Biosafety provisions

1. Would the materials used in your project and/or your final product pose:
1. Risks to the safety and health of team members or others in the lab?
2. Risks to the safety and health of the general public if released by design or accident?
3. Risks to environmental quality if released by design or accident?
4. Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups or states?
2. If your response to any of the questions above is yes:
1. Explain how you addressed these issues in project design and while conducting laboratory work.
2. Describe and document safety, security, health and/or environmental issues as you submit your parts to the Registry.
3. Under what biosafety provisions will / do you operate?
1. Does your institution have its own biosafety rules and if so what are they? Provide a link to them online if possible.
2. Does your institution have an Institutional Biosafety Committee or equivalent group? If yes, have you discussed your project with them?
4. Describe any concerns or changes that were made based on this review.
1. Will / did you receive any biosafety and/or lab training before beginning your project? If so, describe this training.
2. Does your country have national biosafety regulations or guidelines? If so, provide a link to them online if possible.
5. OPTIONAL QUESTION: Do you have other ideas on how to deal with safety or security issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?

Laboratory work requires the using of complex equipment or performing delicate operations, it also involves the use of toxic, flammable or explosive. The execution of this work may cause accidents or serious poisoning; the effects can be immediate or insidious. For this all reasons there are safety rules to follow.

During our project, we have seek much information about products and materiel employed in our experiments and the risks associated with these latter. The litterature, the material safety datsheet and moreover the safety engineers of our labs.

The experiences of our project did not require the use of sophisticated equipment. We have used basic devices that we find in molecular biological laboratory:

Ultra violet lamp:

Centrifuge:

Autoclave:

Water bath

Our project is based on the utilization of mercury, which raises questions about security for the researcher but also for the public and the environment. Mercury is an element that has toxic effects on brain and renal function. The other source of important chemical risks is BET. To avoid these latters, experiments are performed under chemical hoods and used contaminated materials are sterilized.

During our project, mercury is conserved in the laboratory and is subjected to special treatment for elimination of heavy metals. About searchers, protections are simpler: it is necessary to work without contaminating the material. If it is contaminated, it shall not be touched with bare hands. Hence the use of protective equipment.

We are making a device that can quantify a component in water, such as heavy metals pollutants. Two models are being developed. One of them involves the use of the Mer sensor. We therefore need to use mercury to test this system. These raise the environmental issue of the toxic waste management. Liquid having Mercury or tips and dishes that are in contact with this toxic are kept in specials bins. This rubbish bin is then given to a society specialized into toxic waste treatment. A slip monitoring is sign up by every organism that is involved into the production, transportation and treatment of the toxic waste. When the later is cremated, the producer of the waste receive and attestation that must be kept as a proof of the appropriate treatment.

The system we develop needs to be kept off until we want to induce it. In order to achieve that, we develop a post-transcriptional switch mechanism. This system is extracted from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a highly similar system exists in E. coli.

The system of P.aeruginosa controls numerous genes including virulence factors, a syringe mechanism to inject toxic compounds to a targeted cell, but the strain of the bacteria E.Coli we work with does not have this kind of system. If we have chosen the system from P.aeruginosa it is to avoid interferences between our genetic circuit and the metabolism of E.Coli.

Manipulation of living organism allows producing artificial form of life and metabolism. These modifications, although well controlled, require application of the precautionary principle.

Engineered bacteria might be accidentally or on purpose released in the environment. So, caution involves the implementation of different blocking to limit the propagation of these organisms in the nature:

• Nutritional blocking: organisms could survive only with artificial substances. In this way, in case of release into the nature such organisms would die.
• Evolutionary blocking: organisms couldn’t adapt themselves and evolve alone in the nature. This blocking prevents mutations of the organisms that allow them to survive.
• Preprogrammed cellular death: implementation of a suicide gene which is inhibited during wet work. In this way, organisms couldn’t survive outside the laboratory.

The toxic wastes like BET that we use during our experiments are collected in special barrels that are recovered by the reprocessing hazardous wastes company.

We have FLS (Formation locale de sécurité) that regulates what is coming in the laboratory where we are working; they ensure the safety of the researchers, public, and the environment. Six member of our team have had safety training, and all team members have met the safety engineer, who explained the safety rules to be followed.

At CEA some researchers worked on Microsystems devices to detect and quantify these pollutants. They will share their experience and knowledge with us about the way to conduct safe experiments with these chemicals and also about technical aspect of existing measurement device. We would like to compare our work, our biosystem to “technological only” system that already exist, in terms of precision, sensitivity, reliability and costs.

So our work for the safety section of our wiki is not over, it will continue all over our project and after the jamborees. Indeed, we plan to present our work and the synthetic biology to a larger public: companies which fund us, school in our villages and town, a conference at “Midi Minatec”, ...

From the environmental point of view, simple and efficiency methods can be used like bacteria not able to survive outside by use Amino Acids which not existing in nature. It’s too possible to use rare carbon source for the bacteria. We can also use a suicide gene repress by a chemical molecule not found out of a laboratory. Another ways is to make bacteria weak face to the micro-organisms natural selection. For the researcher’s safety in lab, the work in sterile middle, overall and gloves wearing and all other standard protections things are evidently recommended.

To increase the safety off iGEM competition, we think about bacteria which have an inducible essential gene for binary division by a chemical not existing or rare in nature, by this way the bacteria can’t be divide itself so it will be not selected and going to disappear nearly.