Safety Q&A

• Q1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:
  • researcher safety,
  • public safety, or:
  • environmental safety?
• Answer:

The SJTU-BioX iGEM team has taken the safety issues very seriously. For researcher safety, we use common research-use agents and culture. No infectious host organisms are used in our project. All our team members are properly trained and we are wearing protective gears such as glasses, masks, lab coats and double-layered gloves when doing experiments. For public or environmental safety, all experimental wastes are properly disposed according to the rules of our lab. We emphasize even more on the issue of the transfer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It is illegal to transfer GMOs into the environment. We have designed mechanisms in our system to prevents the release of GMOs into the environment. To conclude, we believe that through the efforts we make we should be able to ensure the safety of researchers, public and environment.

• Q2. 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?
• Answer:

Our laboratory in which the experiment is conducted was approved to work with GMOs. Most of our parts in the project are synthesized by commercial companies or PCR from natural organisms. We do have parts that are genetically modified to produce new proteins or nucleotides to fit our needs, but all the parts are constructed and preserved under several mechanisms in the host organism that prevent the transfer of GMOs into the environment. Besides, our design and parts do not, to our knowledge, increase the antibiotic resistance or produce hazardous effect.

• Q3. 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?
• Answer:

We do not have a local bio-safety group, committee or review board in our school or institution, yet we do strictly obey the policies and regulations regarding bio-safety in our country. We mainly use Biosafety Regulation on Pathogenic Microbes and Safety Regulation on Genetic Engineering as our reference.

• Q4. 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?
• Answer:

Since synthetic biology involves both the reading and writing of genes, a series of problems concerning ethics, biosecurity, biosafety are raised. To address these problems, not only scientific methods such as suicide genes can be used, but ethical approaches such as raising public awareness through education should also be emphasized. The rapid development of synthetic biology should not conflict with biosafety.