Team:Peking S/lab/biosafety

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BIOSAFETY

1. would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: •researcher safety, •public safety, or •environment safety?

Since our project concentrates on developing a dynamic system based on bacterial cell-cell communication, there may be certain safety issues relating to researchers, the public and the environment regarding bacteria and gene parts. Therefore, a laboratory regulation had been established by team members according to national biosafety standards combined with requirements from experienced supervisors. It is required that researchers follow strict guidelines during experiments to minimize their exposure to potential risks. Bacteria gene parts are also carefully dealt with to prevent any possible gene transfer to the environment outside. Specifically, bacterial cells are preserved in certain conditions and all the materials and instruments, wastes included, are sterilized with alcohol or bleach after experiments. In addition, our protocols are carefully designed to eliminate potential hazards to the public or the environment.

2. 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, none of our newly-made BioBrick parts would bring about any safety issues according to current professional information. Although our system includes several genes from Vibrio cholera, Streptomyces griseus and S. coelicolor, respectively, these genes are not directly involved with virulence in the case of V. cholera or antibiotics production in the case of Streptomyces species.

3. 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. The project is supervised by several professors and managers in laboratory. The proposals, guidelines and protocols have been carefully revised regularly to ensure biosafety control. The Office of Laboratory and Equipment of Peking University is responsible for any of our relevant safety issues. This webpage provides links of laboratory management rules and regulations generated and implemented by the office,

   http://www.lab.pku.edu.cn/gzzdu.asp
   and this page specially focuses on laboratory safety issues, biosafety included.
   http://www.lab.pku.edu.cn/gzzd/Lab_aqglbf.asp

Also, we have taken national laws, rules, policies, standards and regulations into consideration. Our laboratory strictly follows the national standard ’ Laboratories—General requirements for biosafety’(GB19489-2008) and ‘Biosafety Regulation on Pathogen Microbes’.

   The links are as follows:
   Laboratories—General requirements for biosafety
   http://gbread.sac.gov.cn/bzzyReadWebApp/standardresources.action?m=readFile&bzNum=GB 19489-2008&flag=1
   Biosafety regulation on pathogen microbes http://www1.www.gov.cn/zwgk/2005-05/23/content_256.htm

4. 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?

Biosafety issues are not only academic topics but also ethic and public affairs, especially when it comes to public or environment safety. Thus, public engagement is of necessity and significance. Here we are proposing the idea of an online safety workshop in both academic and plain styles. With the workshop pages teams or any other visitors may have an easy excess toward the most essential knowledge regarding researcher safety, public safety and environment safety as well as participate in the assessment of projects. Also, more new ideas about safety control might be collected through online forums. In addition, it is also a good idea to encourage safety issues to be discussed in human practice. In order to minimize potential hazards through engineering, special attention should be placed on horizontal gene transfer(HGT). Engineered cells are less likely to compete with wild type strains in natural environments and consequently HGT is the more possible occurrence for public or environmental safety issues. Since safety characteristics of a system may differ from its component gene parts, orthogonality and distribution of the system and self-destruction devices within single plasmids should be encouraged. By developing biologically orthogonal systems and distributing a whole system into different plasmids, HGT of any single gene part would not give rise to negative effects of the system working together. As for single gene parts, a suicide system integrated in the standardized backbones may help. E.g. the plasmids could contain certain intracellular toxins, while our strains of cells incubated in lab are integrated with anti-toxin coding sequences, so that the hazards of HGT would be further reduced.