Team:Valencia/Safety

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Safety

Please use this page to answer the safety questions posed on the safety page.

Safety description

The general public expects laboratories to act responsibly and not to expose the community to biorisks, to follow safe working practises and to follow ethical code of conduct. It is the duty of lab managers and workers to prove that the biorisks inherent to lab work are controlled with appropriate safeguards.

Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety?
Our project involves research and development of gene manipulation in Escherichia coli and Synechocystis sp. PCC6803. The project can be worked on a regular molecular biology laboratory, as these bacteria are non-harmful, so there is no researcher safety issue. The parts and strains we have used do not stand as toxic, harmful or somehow dangerous for the public. Finally, there are no special environmental problems apart from the regular molecular biology safety measures.
All the laboratory work will be developed following the corresponding safety rules which generally imply the use of lab coats, gloves, safety glasses and fulfilling further safety requirements regarding MSDS and standard emergency protocols, which are documented and available.
All team members have received a general formation to work in the lab that includes basic safety issues, such as microbial handling, chemical hazards and GMO contention policies.
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?
The only BioBrick that could seem publicly harmful would be the antimicrobial peptides, which lyse bacterial cells and are produced, among others, by humans. There has been no harmful effect shown in humans or other organisms apart from those targeted at, which are bacteria.
Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
Our institutions do not have Biosafety groups that could deal with Synthetic Biology issues. Nevertheless, some of our research groups have been involved in TarPol project, where an ethical committee has been established to cope on these issues. People responsible of the TarPol committee, like Antoine Danchin and Markus Schmidt, have been contacted and will be involved in the Human Practices part of our project in order to consider issues in Biosafety or Biorisk.
Moreover, we have followed the Spanish legal framework in terms of ethical practises in the lab.

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