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Team:Fudan-Shanghai/Safety
From 2011.igem.org
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Safety
Safety issues
Our team takes safety issues seriously throughout the project, and we follow Fudan university safety regulations in the lab.
Researcher safety
All team members are students in the school of life sciences and are well trained through teaching and lab rotations. Protective measures involve gloves, masks and labcoats. The labs we use are equipped with safety facilities, so researcher safety is guaranteed.
Public safety
We will work on non-pathogenic lab strains of E. coli and both the host bacteria and plasmids will be restrained strictly within the lab. Plus, as you may recall, the aim of our project is to create three parts: the tree, neon lights and a system of dinner service. None of these parts involves direct interaction with the public, so there is little risk to public safety from our project.
Environmental safety
The only advantage of our bacteria over natural ones is antibiotic resistance, which is commonly used in biological labs. Plus, all plates will be boiled thoroughly to kill the bacteria before disposal. So, our project does not pose a risk to environmental safety.
BioBrick parts and devices
In this year’s project, we do not create any new parts; rather, we select parts from the registry, and modify them to serve particular purposes. The genes or biobricks that we work with are of known properties. The devices we created are mainly used for communication between different E.coli; the production of colors; the expression of regulatory proteins. So the risk, if any, is very little.
Local biosafety group
In China, the main concerns for biosafety are pathogenic microbes and the genetically modified crops. In our project, we use non-pathogenic E.coli and the created devices will be restrained in the labs we work in. Therefore no laws or regulations regarding the biosafety issue are violated.
Biosafety for future iGEM competition:
In the brain-storm process, one team member came up with the idea of creating a bio-machine to circumspect the harmful aspect of Solidago canadensis, a Canadian plant which was introduced into China as an ornamental flower. Her idea was that if this plant reached a certain population, the synthesis of a toxic protein is commenced, thus the growth of foreign plant is restrained. This idea can be applied generally to the field of synthetic biology and to future iGEM competition. So our concern is that each modified organism should be equipped with a suicide mechanism, which is triggered by the population density. In that case, even if the genetically modified organism is released accidentally into the environment, this mechanism could prevent mass harm.
