Team:HIT-Harbin/Safety

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

To some degree, synthetic biology research will raise safety issues since the experiments involving toxic substance. However, we have effective protective measures in our laboratory. Moreover, the field we studied belongs to the food industry. There would be no poisonous or harmful substances produced. With proper measures and safety awareness kept in mind, the risk would be minimum during the experiments.

2.Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?

No. Our new biobrick parts (or devices) all come from the microorganisms which have been used in food industry for over years. And we will utilize the parts (or devices) in the food industry as well. Thus, we have to make sure the new biobricks cannot raise any safety issues.

3.Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

Yes. Our project is well known by the School of Food Science and Engineering and Harbin Institute of Technology. And our instructors will supervise our work during the whole projects.

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?

We think of three useful steps as following: Firstly, every lab should have strict disciplines. Secondly, parts, devices or systems should be added with a label, such as fluorescent label, so that we can easily track them. Thirdly, suicide system should be applied into engineered bacteria. So engineered bacteria would kill themselves once they are out of control.