Team:USTC-China/Safty

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PART ONE----Overview

Q: Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researcher safety,public safety, or environmental safety? A: The main propose of our project is to regulate some of the kinetic characters of E.coli, which is not much concerned with the toxicity of the bacteria. However, it is never too overreacting to keep a warning bell in mind. Just in case our experiments may bring about uneasiness of safety, we have take measures to make sure people inside the laboratory and in the outside world don’t get hurt. Several rules are established for everyone to stand to such as protective gears are required while performing experiments , and poisonous and reactive reagents should be used in special areas. For the safety of the public, and the environment, we managed to classify all the experimental waste due to the environmental demands of the institute to prevent unwanted genes, if any, from contaminating the world around us. Q: 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? A: Since our team only made new parts that are involved in the directional movement of bacteria that will not impact the pathogenicity or other safety concerns. No hazard is caused by the BioBrick parts we designed this year. Q: 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? A: Our state government has set rules and regulations on biosafety, laboratories working on pathogenic microbes are registered and under strict surveillance. We also evaluate our experimental process according to the regulations put forth by relevent departments of P.R.China. Q: 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? A: This year our team has developed an innovative way to deal with the safety problems during the study of synthetic biology-- Three Laws of Synthesis Biology. Read as follows: 1.Once reconstructed plasmd is spread into any other non-aimed bacteria ,the suicide system for the plasmd is stared. 2.Once the mutation is accumulated into some degrees,the suicide system for the bacteria is stared. 3.Once the bacterium is away from the set enviroment,the suicide system is started. We will explain the details later in related parts.