Safty Proposal

1. Would the materials used in your project and/or your final product pose: a. Risks to the safety and health of team members or others in the lab?

The main purpose of our project is to regulate some of the kinetic properties 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 taken measures to make sure people inside the laboratory and in the outside world don’t get hurt. Several rules are established for everyone to stick to such as protective gears are required while performing experiments, and poisonous and reactive reagents should be used in special areas. We are using separate and distant spaces to perform experiments and study. Also before the whole project started we had a specific and detailed safety training for both USTC and USTC Software team members since we are using the same laboratory.

Ethidium bromide, an intercalating agent used as a nucleic acid fluorescent stain, will be and only be applied in electrophoretic procedures during our whole project. Anyone performing the procedure is asked to be wearing nitrile gloves all the time and no other thing is allowed to be done in the same area. The used agarose gels are carefully collected and thrown away after experiments.

Ultraviolet light are used during sterilization and decontamination of culture medium as well as visualizing the stained DNA in the electrophoretic gels. We are making rules against direct exposition to UV radiation such as special safety lenses would be used and the machine we use to visualize electrophoretic gels is UV-blocking.

b. Risks to the safety and health of the general public if released by design or accident?

Since the strains we use in the whole study is not related to the genes of plants, animals or human and no pathogenic or toxic genes are being used during experiments, it is not likely that our materials or products will threaten the safety and health of the general public. Nevertheless the regulations of Genetically Engineered Organisms (GMOs) made by relevant departments of P. R. China will be followed.

c. Risks to environmental quality if released by design or accident?

For the safety of 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. And since our project only concerns with the kinetic properties of bacteria, it is of no harm to the environment.

d. Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups or states? Taking into account that our team is aimed at changing some specific characters of bacteria, and the strains we are using are neither pathogenic nor toxic, no risks to security will be posed.

Please explain your responses (whether yes or no) to these questions.

Specifically, are any parts or devices in your project associated with (or known to cause):

- pathogenicity, infectivity, or toxicity? No.

- threats to environmental quality?   No.

- security concerns?  No.

2.  If your response to any of the questions above is yes: a. Explain how you addressed these issues in project design and while conducting laboratory work. b. Describe and document safety, security, health and/or environmental issues as you submit your parts to the Registry.  

  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.