Team:Tianjin/Safety

Question 1

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

The organisms we are using this year are Escherichia coli (Risk Group 1), Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Risk Group 1), and bacteriophage, all of which are of limited dangers to team members and environment. According to project plan, there will be no risks to team members, publics, and environment. Although the bacteriophage may posed certain risks on the E. coli of other research groups, we are extremely carefully with our experiment of bacteriophage to ensure an environment free of it. Furthermore, with our orthogonal system, we have produced bacteriophage that will not infect ordinary bacteria. In this way, we took a step further to ensure the safety of our laboratory.

Question 2

2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes, did you document these issues in the Registry? how did you manage to handle the safety issue? How could other teams learn from your experience?

None of the new BioBrick parts or devices we made this year will raise any safety issues, because we use the orthogonal system to ensure the product being produced in a controlled and monitored environment, and all the product of the BioBrick are harmless to human and environment.

Question 3

3. 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?

We have a Peiyang Biological Control Committee that scrutinize our project looking for potential dangers and offered advice about laboratory facilities for a safer environment. This help us to ensure the biosafety of our project, and we are very pleased to have this committee’s supervision on our plans.
Regarding this year’s project, the committee acclaimed it as ‘promising, secure and clean‘. They agree with our philosophy about the orthogonal system, thinking it will be a prospect of a safer laboratory.

Question 4

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?

Besides the conventional way of containing dangerous biohazard, we could work at the foundation to solve the problem completely. By modifying the Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequence of the mRNA in E. coli and the 16S of the ribosome, we are able to construct an alternative translation system to prevent potential produce of dangerous produce. In this way, we can put plasmid producing harmful substances in the orthogonal system to carefully control and monitor its synthesis. We even went one step further to construct an orthogonal bacteriophage that have only the altered SD sequence and ribosome in its essential DNA fragment. This new phage will not propagate in normal cells, but only in our engineered orthogonal bacteria. Thus, we decreased the probability of phage infect other bacteria, protecting the laboratory environment, while engaged in innovative work with this NEW organism.

第4段

《三十幅》由北洋合唱团驻团作曲家崔薇老师创作，歌词选自道家创始人老子的《道德经》，道家的“无”的思想和精神在这首作品中得到了很好的阐释，歌词与旋律相得益彰，因此在演唱时需要对歌词有深刻的理解，技巧上和音准上的要求也很高，只有这种高要求才能将这首作品中所蕴含的中国传统思想中内在的东西表现出来。北洋在这点上做的很到位，在台上将这首作品演绎的淋漓尽致，开场就博得了满堂喝彩。

第5段

接下来是一首拉脱维亚作品《祈求》，这部作品是根据格列高素歌的元素所创作的现代的、高难度的合唱作品，有很大的演唱难度。整首作品分为三部分，每一部分的难度都很高,在排练的过程中遇到了很多的困难,包括和乐器的配合上,力度的协调上等等,因此在演唱时对作品的把握很困难,平时的排练也着重的强调了这些问题,每一位团员都很敬业,不断地揣摩,纠正发音,比赛当天,合唱团发挥出了正常的水平,平时一次次强调的问题在舞台上都没有出现,大家的努力最终没有白费.这首作品演绎的很完美.

第6段

正是由于勤勤恳恳的排练和比赛时正常的发挥,天津大学北洋合唱团在166支国内外优秀的团队中夺得了成人混声组的金奖,并且获得了优秀钢琴伴奏奖的第一名，合唱团出色的表现赢得了国内外评委的高度赞扬，很多国际知名的评委在看到北洋的演出后都表示，“北洋音色”是走在世界的最前端的，北洋合唱团是这次比赛中他们所看到的最出色的合唱团。

第7段

在即将到来的2012韩国丽水世博会中,北洋合唱团将代表中国赴韩国参加演出,期待他们更加精彩的表现..