Team:Wageningen UR/Safety/Six

From 2011.igem.org

Building a Synchronized Oscillatory System

Biosafety and biosecurity considerations

Notification

While the quorum sensing property of the BioBrick system might be involved with the pathogenicity of other infectious micro-organisms this will be notified in the part information at the Registry of Standard Biological Parts (RSBP). It would be good to indicate this in the Design Notes of the Part Design page of the RSBP. Furthermore it should become clear from the introduction on the Main Page. Because effects of release out of the containment are mostly unpredictable, biosafety information wouldn’t be at the right place on the page Hard Information. Despite this is not the case for the Synchroscillator, we also designed a BioBrick system that has not been produced and validated, this is the ‘Fungal Track ‘n Trace’ design). If the ‘Fungal Track ‘n Trace’ BioBrick system would be validated by another team and turn out to be hazardous it should be possible for the other team to indicate this under User Reviews at the Experience page. For this purpose, the team that used the BioBrick part design should be enabled to edit that page. The indications of biosafety could even be more generalized if there were an option to provide additional safety information when submitting BioBrick parts to the Registry. This could be done by filling in two extra text entry box(es) headed with, the notions on safety indicated by iGEM:

  • Foreseen BioBrick Part or System/Device risk(s) and
  • ‘Chassis enhancement’

or by marking a ‘No relevant biosafety issue’ checkbox (2011; Jump to References). It might also be beneficial if the Main Page of the BioBrick part had a Biosafety category, which would add relevant biosafety information from the entry page automatically.