Team:Nanjing China Bio/outreach

1.Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:
Researcher safety, Public safety, or Environment safety
Based on our experimental design, all facilities in the laboratory are performed in Biosafety Level 2 and the materials we use are E.coli Top 10, Salmonella typhimurium VNP, Melanoma B16F10 and the laboratory mice. Since the Salmonella typhimurium VNP is infectious, we take some measures to ensure the health of the team when we conduct the experiments with them. During all the experiments, all the instructions are posted and the workers are asked to wear the nitrile gloves, lab coats and masks, moreover, a room is separated for the experiments and the bacterial is kept in a special place. We also clean the experiment table once a day. For the researcher safety, our team is trained by all the safety regulations before we start the experiments. Normal safety protocols are observed for experimental procedures. However, except for those normal procedures that the team can deal with on a daily basis, we will also use the ultraviolet light in our experiments so we decide to arrange different people to do this work to reduce the time contacting with it. As for the public and environment safety, we always keep the products in the cell cultures to avoid their spreading to the outside and check their conditions regularly. At the same time we will also dispose those products according to the protocols.

2.Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise safety issues?
NO, none of the new BioBrick parts we made raises any significant safety issues since all the genes we use commonly exist in E.coli Top 10 and Salmonella typhimurium VNP. Although we give the transformed bacterias some advantages compared with the wild type, the advantages just exist in the tumor-targeting therefore it's still safe for us to use and manipulate. Given that we always keep the bacterias in the cell cultures, there is no chance for them to contact with the outside so it's harmless for the environment.

3.Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
Yes, our team is supported by the Department of Life Science, Nanjing University. So we are under all the Department's safety regulations. Evaluating the experiments process in terms of safety, the department always reminds our team to put the safety to priority and arrange some experienced research assistants to help us.

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?
In terms of the safety issues, when the synthetic products have the chance to be commercial products, we should consider the harmony between synthetic and natural products and find an appropriate place for the synthetic products ,most importantly, establish some particular protocols for these products which are created by human.