Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:
The bacteria upon which we have being operating is non-pathogenic E.coli epi300,an organism at BSL-1 according to standards of CDC in the United States. Minor risks are contained in our research since the organism and plasmids, which causes no severe infection to human and animals, will be handled properly by well-trained personnel after every and each experiment, and the chemicals in frequent use are proved to be friendly, except EB ,which is separated along with related devices in a special section, the contact with which requires such protections as a pair of rubber gloves.
Prior to the researches of the project, our team members received all basic trainings on biosafety and laboratory safety in turn ,lectured by professors in the laboratory and participants in 2011 iGEM on Tsinghua-A team. Thus no major safety problem will possibly be encountered, which will be under control if they would emerge.
Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes,
Almost impossible. Primarily they have being used by a large number of researchers and no reports concerning safety issues have being published, nor have we discovered anything insecure. Secondly they are preserved in special containers and separated from the public. So this should be out of the question.
Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
Yes. We are supported and financed by Department of Automation, instructed and supervised by its professors and engineers studying life sciences. And laboratory assistants give us quite a lot of instructive suggestions including problems on biosafety.
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?
Teams should strictly abide by regulations of the laboratory. Characters and functions of parts ,devices and systems should be documented in detail online so that they could be referred to if in need. Thus they could be safer.
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