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Risks and benefits
Under Good Microbiological Practices the risk of working with the BioBrick system is rather small to the researcher. If the system were to be released into the surroundings, there is a low risk that it would enter a pathogenic host organism that relies on quorum sensing for its pathogenicity.
However, the potential effects have not yet been studied, so unforeseen hazards might turn up. Regarding the benefits, it is our opinion that a robust biological oscillator that could be integrated into more complex genetic circuits would be of great utility for more advanced synthetic biology applications; particularly related to cell synchronization. One could also envision the oscillator as a core component of a system sequentially performing highly specific enzymatic reactions.
Based on these considerations, we conclude that the potential benefits in successfully executing our project outweighs the estimated risks.
