Team:Wisconsin-Madison/safety

From 2011.igem.org

Revision as of 21:24, 27 July 2011

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Safety Q&A

Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety?
The only organism we use in our lab is E. coli, strain DH10B. We follow standard BSL1 protocols to work with it, and any recombinant strains we produce. We have needed to extract genomic DNA from other organisms during the course of our research. When necessary, we have used the lab of our advisor, which is BSL2 rated. As with all recombinant DNA, our project should not, without proper extensive testing, be exposed to the environment or public.

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?
All the parts we plan on producing involve better sensing of certain biofuel molecules. These parts will have no inherent safety issues, but should of course be used with caution when being paired with parts that do have risks associated. By only creating parts dealing with inputs, we run no added risk of producing dangerous compounds.

Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution? What do they think of your project? The Office of Biological Safety (OBS) in the Department of Environment, Health, and Safety at the UW-Madison runs a biological safety course which was mandatory for all iGEM participants. Beyond adhering to all guidelines established in this, we have not further discussed project specifics with the OBS.

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? Maintaining best practices established by biosafety committees is always useful, but there are even more interesting options that could be useful for broader synthetic biology safety down the road. For example, making engineered organisms dependent on non-standard nucleotides or amino acids which are only provided in a laboratory setting could help prevent the accidental release of recombinant organisms.

Safety Statement

"The attitudes and actions of those who work in the laboratory determine their own safety, and that of their colleagues and of the community. Laboratory equipment and design can contribute to safety only if they are used properly by people who are genuinely concerned and knowledgeable about safety issues."
If scientists in this new field want to reach for the sky, they must first pull themselves from the underground, for they have the World to prove to us.

Why Care About Safety?
Synthetic Biology is still an emerging field, but it has great promise for benefiting mankind through new cures, new treatments, new methods of fuel production, new chemical syntheses, etc. As the field becomes more powerful and its methods more accessible, it poses dangers if put into the wrong hands or if the wrong mistakes are made. As scientists in this emerging field, it is our duty to carefully evaluate any possible safety issues, not only because of general safety concerns, but also because any breach in safety has the potential for to demolish any positive public and scientific opinion. Though this new born field has great prospects, any negligence can ruin the field's reputation. We must prove to the general public and other scientists that the potential dangers of Synthetic Biology can be effectively recognized, controlled, and prevented.

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