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From 2012.igem.org

Safety is a major concern of the iGEM organization, therefore the iGEM organization asks of every team to answer certain questions about the safety aspect of their iGEM project, safety in the lab, the environment and the public. Team Groningen tried to answer these question with the best of their ability. Most of our team members have lab working experience and are aware of the safety regulations of working in a lab. We decided to add an extra food safety page to our wiki, because it is essential to our project.

For a better understanding on biosafety and the rules and regulation on GMOs and microbiology in general, we invited Dr. J.S. Lolkema and Prof. Dr. ir. J.D. van Elsas to give us lectures and to assist us considering the need of safety during our iGEM project.

We divided our safety page into four different sections. On the first page we focus on safety in the lab, we address the rule regulation of lab work at the Rijksuniversiteit of Groningen (RUG), but also about researcher safety and all things concerning the lab such as: the biobricks, microorganisms and the biosafety group.

On public safety page public safety page we say something about safety of our sticker design and the public perception of the Food Warden system.

On the environmental safety page we discus in length the risk and hazards of the our genetic modification. Furthermore we address the effect on environment and our thoughts about a system to kill the Food Warden bacterium after use.

On our last safety page we discuss food safety. How to define rotten meat and the importance of prevention of eating spoiled meat.

One of the safety question we had deficulty placing on our safety page. 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?

We thought it would be best to Find an alternative system for the antibiotic resistance markers used nowadays (in the BioBricks). This could be a pigment instead of cloning bacteria with antibiotic resistance. By horizontal gene transfer these resistance genes can be passed to other bacterial species.

When using proper lab techniques, safety measures and ofcourse common sense a lot of possible dangerous situations can be avoided. Due to human errors sometimes these measures or techniques are not uphold. Probably like us every iGEM team has its own lab in the university. There for a random safety inspection by the iGEM organization. However since labs are all over the world not one person can do that, but every iGEM team has supervisors that would also eventual be a judge at the jamboree. The judge form one university could the inspection according the standard checklist from the organization for a noughboring university hosting a iGEM team. Or the national microbiobial safety committee could preform the inspection for the team in that country.