Team:Tokyo-NoKoGen/Safety

Tokyo-NokoGen 2011

<Safety Proposal>

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

▪ researcher safety,

▪ public safety, or

▪ environmental safety?

  Our project will not raise any issues in researcher safety, public safety and environmental safety. Our project will be carried out with E. coli laboratory strains and we do not use any infectious organisms. Our laboratory work will be carried out in the laboratories of Prof. Sode (advisor), Assoc. Prof. Tsugawa (instructor) and Prof. Ikebukuro (instructor). Those laboratories have a proper facility of the biosafety level 2 to handle E. coli and perform genetic engineering experiments.

  In our project, we are trying to construct the E. coli that absorbs Cesium from radioactive-contaminated water. The ultimate aim of our project is to develop an E. coli machine that can be practically used to clean up radioactive-contaminated environment. However, genetically engineered organisms cannot be easily released to environment. All team members well understand this point. We are just aiming as biotechnologists at showing potential of synthetic biology for those applications that are harmful for humans and cannot be easily achieved by non-biological ways.

-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,they don’t. Our BioBrick parts do not posess any safety risk for environment and researches. We will make a new BioBrick part that uptakes cesium from environment. This part is natively expressed in a non-harmful strain of E. coli and we will clone it from that strain. We are also trying to make new BioBrick parts to regulate gene expressing network. We will use those genes that already have analyzed in peer-reviewed papers. Thus that new BioBrick part will not raise any safety issues. 

-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, there is. There is the committee of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and we are following its safety and ethical guidelines.

-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?

   Heinrich's Law: for every 300 unsafe acts (no-injury accidents), there are 29 minor injuries and 1 major injury. So, minimizing the number of no­injury accidents will reduce the probability of more severe accidents. We suggest that all teams share any safety issues and solution timely on iGEM web site or wikis. That should prevent the occurrence of more serious hazards.