Team:Nanjing China Bio/safety

1.Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: Researcher safety, Public safety, or Environment safety?

For the researcher safety, our members are trained by all the safety regulations before we start the experiments. Based on our experimental design, all facilities in the laboratory are performed in Biosafety Level 2 and the materials we use are E.coliTop 10, Salmonella typhimurium VNP, Melanoma B16F10 and the laboratory mice. Since the Salmonella Typhimurium VNP is infectious, we take some measures to ensure the safety of our team members when we conduct the experiments with the bacteria. During all the experiments, all the instructions are posted and the workers are requested to wear the nitrile gloves, lab coats and masks. Moreover, a room is separated for the experiments and the bacteria are kept in a special place. Normal safety protocols are observed for experimental procedures. 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 arrange different people to do this work to reduce the average time each member contacting with it. As for the public and environment safety, we always keep the products in the cell cultures to avoid their spread to the outside and check their conditions regularly. At the same time, we 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 would raise any significant safety issues since all the genes we use commonly exist in E.coli Top 10 and Salmonella Typhimurium VNP. Although the modified bacteria have some advantages compared with the wild type, their abilities are only enhanced in terms of tumor targeting. Therefore it’s still safe for us to use and manipulate the bacteria. Given that we always keep the bacteria 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, NanjingUniversity. 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 in 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, once the synthetic products have the chance to be commercial products, we should take the harmony between synthetic and natural products into consideration and find an appropriate place for the synthetic products. Most importantly, we should establish some particular protocols for these products which are created by human using synthetic biology techniques.