Team:SCU-China/Safety

From 2014.igem.org

Safety

1. Your Training

Have your team members received any safety training yet?

Yes, we have already received safety training.

Please briefly describe the topics that you learned about (or will learn about) in your safety training.

The advisors have given us the safety training such as what risks the chemicals may cause and how to avoid them or reduce the harm as much as possible before the experiment .

Please give a link to the laboratory safety training requirements of your institution (college, university, community lab, etc). Or, if you cannot give a link, briefly describe the requirements.

Yes, our school has a special department responsible for this part, their officers have inspected our laboratory and gave us suggestions about biosafety.

2. Your Local Rules and Regulations

Who is responsible for biological safety at your institution? (You might have an Institutional Biosafety Committee, an Office of Environmental Health and Safety, a single Biosafety Officer, or some other arrangement.) Have you discussed your project with them? Describe any concerns they raised, and any changes you made in your project based on your discussion.

School of Life Sciences in Sichuan University.and Mr. Yang is the lab. manager of our iGEM team.

What are the biosafety guidelines of your institution? Please give a link to these guidelines, or briefly describe them if you cannot give a link.

http://labsb.scu.edu.cn/sbc/detail.jsp?portalId=723&cid=8125&nextcid=8142&againNextcid=8207&aid=46365

In your country, what are the regulations that govern biosafety in research laboratories? Please give a link to these regulations, or briefly describe them if you cannot give a link.

http://www.lascn.net/policy/law/nationlaw/201212/6374.html

4. Risks of Your Project Now

Please describe risks of working with the biological materials (cells, organisms, DNA, etc.) that you are using in your project. If you are taking any safety precautions (even basic ones, like rubber gloves), that is because your work has some risks, however small. Therefore, please discuss possible risks and what you have done (or might do) to minimize them, instead of simply saying that there are no risks at all.

Risks to the safety and health of team members, or other people working in the lab:

The engineered strains used in this project are the most commonly used E. coli DH5α, TOP10 and BL21 which cause no severe infection to human and animals and would be inactivated after experiments. The chemicals frequently used are proved to be friendly and will be handled properly by well-trained students.

Risks to the safety and health of the general public (if any biological materials escaped from your lab):

Since our experiment design is just about the common E.coli and the parts we used or modified are mostly reporters and regulator devices which have been used by former iGEM teams and proved to be innocuous. Even if they are released by accident, they won't cause any severe infection.

Risks to the environment (from waste disposal, or from materials escaping from your lab):

The E.coli strains are widely used, so we believe they won't have much impact on the environment. Actually, we have inactivated all the strains strictly after experiments.

Risks to security through malicious mis-use by individuals, groups, or countries:

No, since all the engineered strains are frequently used by researchers all over the world and mostly exist in laboratory environments.

What measures are you taking to reduce these risks? (For example: safe lab practices, choices of which organisms to use.)

All materials that touch our engineering bacteria are sterilized and all the bacteria are killed strictly. In the meantime, we ask all of our team members to take care of their own safety especially when they do the experiments with some deleterious compounds such as EB.

5. Risks of Your Project in the Future

What would happen if all your dreams came true, and your project grew from a small lab study into a commercial/industrial/medical product that was used by many people? We invite you to speculate broadly and discuss possibilities, rather than providing definite answers. Even if the product is "safe", please discuss possible risks and how they could be addressed, rather than simply saying that there are no risks at all.

What new risks might arise from your project's growth? (Consider the categories of risk listed in parts a-d of the previous question: lab workers, the general public, the environment, and malicious mis-uses.) Also, what risks might arise if the knowledge you generate or the methods you develop became widely available?

In our project, all the bacteria we used are harmless bacteria and all the plasmids are harmless too, though, but we need to culture those bacteria together. As a result, we must concede there is a little possibility producing some harmful materials because of the gene communications.

Does your project currently include any design features to reduce risks? Or, if you did all the future work to make your project grow into a popular product, would you plan to design any new features to minimize risks? (For example: auxotrophic chassis, physical containment, etc.) Such features are not required for an iGEM project, but many teams choose to explore them.

One of the applications of our project is to produce some useful products via the complex gene pathways. And the first thing that we should take into consideration is the side products especially these deleterious side products. Under this suituation, we suggest that we should keep our gene pathways as simple as possible.

6. Further Comments

If you are completing a Preliminary Version of your Safety Form, use this space to describe how far you have progressed in your project, and give some comments about any questions that you left blank.

You can also use this space for any other comments or additional material.

According to my consideration, we carried out the safety form extremely strictly in the parts about the safety of our team members and our lab because the most precious thing for everyone is their life. However, in the meanwhile, we also cannot deny that we did something not very well in the parts about the potential problems of our project because we don't and we cannot take everything into consideration especially for the application of our project in that there is still a pretty long way to go. But, The only thing that I can say without any hesitation is that we did the BEST that we CAN.

Sichuan university