Team:TMU-Tokyo/Safety

Human and Safety

■Safety works

We made a safety guide and a safety checklist for the experiment.
What is safety guide?
What is a safety checklist for the experiment?

■Human works

On July 11, 2012, our team made a lecture at the career guidance to the 9th graders of Minamitama Metropolitan Secondary School. We described our project and activities of iGEM in the lecture and caught many interests about synthetic biology and iGEM from the future researchers. In the one-hour lecture, we talked broadly about of our campus life and then focused on iGEM as an activity example. However, the students had no basic knowledge of synthetic biology. Therefore, began with catchy topics, used easy words besides technical terms and used more figures and illustrations besides long explanations to make the whole lecture more understandable. The reactions of the students were good. They paid good attention to our lecture and some were taking notes. The fact that iGEM is an international competition seemed to attracted their ambition. Through this short time, we believe that we were able to make notice the 9th graders that there is a science field called “synthetic biology” and that there is an international competition for synthetic biology students. We gained many attention and interests of the becoming scientists to this field and iGEM.

■Safety　key question Answer

key question1.
Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of :
・researcher safety,
No, there is no risks to reseachers in experiments we planned. Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 that we treat is assigned to Biosafety Level 1. According to Table 1 of World Health Organization (WHO) Laboratory biosafety manual, we treat "a microorganism that is unlikely to cause human or animal disease" in an experiment that is assigned to Biosafety Level 1. Therefore, there are few risks in an experiment that we treat Escherichia coli K-12. Actually, it is generally known that Escherichia coli K-12 is not dangerous to humans. And also, we use formaldehyde in our experiment. Formaldehyde is harmful to humans. However, we use a very small quantity of it. We use only 10mM HCHO in 10mM phosphate buffer. Furthermore, we'll not touch formaldehyde if researchers accept a protocol that we made. So formaldehyde doesn’t harm them. If they don't accept the protocol, formaldehyde can harm them. But we tried to remove risks to take following two measures. First, we're lectured on safety by our instructor. We learned notices of safety in experiments, for example taking notes of a procedure before a experiment. We also learned how to treat chemicals. It was useful in experiments that we learned in the lecture. Second, we made a checklist for safety and used it in experiments. We selected points on safety from our experimental protocol, and made these points the checklist. Researchers will not make a mistake by using the checklist in experiments. Making these efforts, we tried to keep human errors to a minimum.

・public safety, or
No. We obey a Japanese low called "Act on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity through Regulations on the Use of Living Modified Organisms" (http://www.bch.biodic.go.jp/download/law/domestic_regulations/070401law_ver6.pdf) when we treat Escherichia coli K-12. If we obey the low, there is no risk to release living modified orKey question 2 Do any of the new BioBrick parts(or devices) that you made this year raise safety issues?

→NO

No.
This time, we made a new parts that decomposed formaldehyde. It runs low risk because we connected the new parts that trace E.coli with iGEM parts. E.coli we used was K-12 and Biosafety level(BSL)1, so as you can see, it run low risk. ganisms for public. Furthermore, there is no danger if they should be released because Escherichia coli K-12 is not dangerous to humans. On the other side, formaldehyde is harmful for humans. However, we use a very small quantity of it, and it's not released to public if researchers accept a protocol that we made. So formaldehyde is not danger for public. And it has already described what we did to accept the low and the protocol.

environmental safety?
No. Living modified organisms and formaldehyde are not also released to environment if researchers obey the low and the protocol. So formaldehyde is not dangerous for environment. And it has already described what we did to accept the low and the protocol to experiment safely.


Key question 2
Do any of the new BioBrick parts(or devices) that you made this year raise safety issues?

→NO

No.
This time, we made a new parts that decomposed formaldehyde. It runs low risk because we connected the new parts that trace E.coli with iGEM parts. E.coli we used was K-12 and Biosafety level(BSL)1, so as you can see, it run low risk.


key question 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?

Yes, there is a local biosafety group in our institution. We discussed safety of our project with members of it. They accepted our project.


Key question 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?

We think that many people worried about safety of experiment when we spread around synthetic biology and activity of iGEM. To resolve the anxiety, it is necessary not only individual the conscious but also team over all. And so, we proposed “check list”! We created the check list when we created experiment protocol at the same time, and we considered what we should pay attention to and whether there is any danger. Everyone can do experiment thinking about safety by creating the check list. And individual the conscious goes up and it’s possible to decrease human mistakes. Moreover, we think other teams can understand what we should pay attention to by posting the check list in Wiki.
Not just check list, we made “safety Guide”! This guide can be understood by those with few knowledge. It is written down regulation and law about experiment of gene recombination in our country and how the experiment was being conducted. We believe that commons can understand that we conduct experiment in safety and along the rules. By doing this, many people will be interested in iGEM