Welcome to our page of human practice. Just as the HQ of the iGEM said, the aim this part is to outline and detail a new approach to an issue of Human Practice in synthetic biology as it relates to our project, such as safety, security, ethics, or ownership, sharing, and innovation. So we have three parts of our human practice. The aims of the first two are to spread of the concept of the synthetic biology, and to attract general attention to the safety of synthetic biology or gene transfection. And the third one is our safety page, it is used to answer some biosafety questions and introduce our new geneguard module briefly.
Just as was said above, the aims of the first two parts of our human practice are to spread of the concept of the synthetic biology and attract general attention to the biological safety. To strengthen the effect of our human practice and make the human practice have more pertinence, we have divided our effort in two parts.
1. A survey which aims to students major in life science.
Overview
The first one is a survey which aims to the freshmen and sophomore of our school of life science. The survey is based on the Internet (www.sojump.com) in order to keep it environmental friendly, and the questionnaire of survey is at this address: http://www.sojump.com/jq/1874172.aspx. Sorry for designing the questionnaire in Chinese. We have done this because that our lower class boy and girls are still not familiar with the professional English items in biology, and they will comprehend the aim of the survey more easily by a questionnaire in Chinese.
The survey is ongoing and the result will be on presented on the presentation in Jamboree: Aisa.
The Present Result
Up to now, the result of the survey and the responses from our lower class students have shown that the concept of synthetic biology has been well understood and they have begun very interested in iGEM. And hence we are planning to hold a lecture to our lower class students to introduce the synthetic biology more deeply and comprehensively, such as the construction of Biobrick.
2. A show of Posters which aims to public.
Overview
The second part of our human practice is a show of posters in an exhibition of Popularization of Science. We have designed two posters to show to the public. The first one is about the synthetic biology and the second one is about the biosafety.
Design
On the first poster, we introduce the concept of synthetic biology and its application prospect to public. And on the second poster, we introduce the importance of biosafety from several aspects, such as the technology, and the uncertainty of transgene, the ethical problems emerged from it, and the effort of scientists to protect people away from the risk of transgene.
The present result
Thanks to the help of our school’s museum of biology and Ms. Zhang (detailed in acknowledgement), we had got a chance to present them to public. This exhibition was located in Haizhu District of Guangzhou, where our university is also located. There were many residents there to attend the exhibition, and we thought this try of showing the posters to public is beneficial to the spread of the concept of synthetic biology and biosafety. There have been a debate of the transgene in China for a long time, and this show will help people to face the transgene squarely.
After the exhibition, the posters would have been shown in the museum on weekends, the people visiting the museum can also learn the new synthetic biology and biosafety from the posters.
The picture is following:
3. Safety
Safety Questions:
1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety?
- First of all, we have ensured the safety of the researchers. The safety regulations in the laboratory and be strictly obeyed. There is an isolated area for us to experiment when we have to use toxic chemicals as EB or other material. And the laboratory where we have been doing our work has staff to reduce the potential safety hazard.
- Second, we have ensured the public safety by doing our experiment within the area of our laboratory strictly. And of course, the laboratory building where we have been working has a specific safety system for garbage disposal or recycle the garbage.
- The third, we have also considered the environmental safety. Besides the effort we have done above, the gene part we chose has little potential to raise safety issues to environment. And the materials we have used are not allowed to be taken out of the laboratory.
2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?
- No. On one hand, almost all the Biobrick parts we used for iGEM are from the DNA kit, and the plasmids in the kit are safe due to the well-developed technique of transfection and screening though they are carrying the antibiotic resistance genes. On the other hand, our own Biobrick and strain we used has little potential to risk the environment.
3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
- Yes. The State Key Laboratory of Bio-control is located in our school, and most of our experiments are done in a subsidiary lab of it. Although our project will not course any serious biosafety problem, we check each part and material used for the project carefully and all are approved safe by that state key lab.
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 are trying to use Plasmid Addition genes to avoid or cut down the possibilities about three biosafety core problems: Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), foreign genes’ unstability(or the parts, devices, and systems) and antibiotic using.
- Plasmid Addiction
- They are come from natural plasmid systems (e.g. Plasmid F from E.coli), which contains a pair of stable toxin and an unstable antidote. The genes can both express when the plasmid is in the cell.If the plasmid is missing by accident, the unstable antidote is decomposed by some enzymes, and the toxin causes the plasmid-missing bacteria to die.
- Device Construction
- There two proper pairs of toxin and antidote, named the Pair 1 (ccdB and ccdA from E.coli`s F plasmid )and Pair 2（ParE and ParD from E.coli`s plasmid）
- Plasmid Vector: Insert Toxin 1 gene and Antidote 2 gene in the Plasmid vector.
- Bacteria Genome: Insert Toxin 2 gene and Antidote 1 gene in the bacteria genome through transposon.
- When HGT happens, due to the missing of the Antidote 1 gene and its production in the new host, the Toxin 1 will cause the new host to die.
- When the plasmid vector is missing, the missing of the Antidote 2 will cause the cell to die. And statistically, the intact host cells will be the overwhelming majority. And the Plasmid Addition is established.
- The toxin`s function can replace the antibiotic selection.
- We will choose as many pairs as we could and use mathematical modeling to model the system and optimize the efficiency of the different combinations.
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