Team:SCUT-China/Safety

The chassis organisms we used for this project

List and description of all new or modified coding regions we used

Do the biological materials used in our lab work pose any of the following risks? Every species we worked with belongs to BL1. They do no harm to human. Experimenters is careful not to release any parts to the public. And even the worst situation happens as it is released, it will hardly bring risks.

a) Risks to the safety and health of team members, or other people working in the lab:
Yes. May cause irritation to skin, eyes, and respiratory tract, may affect kidneys. However, E.coli is not considered a human or animal pathogen nor is it toxicogenic. Any concerns for E.coli in terms of health considerations are mitigated by its poor ability to colonize the colon and establish infections.

b) Risks to the environment (from waste disposal, or from materials escaping from your lab):
The plasmids we designed cannot function outside certain cell lines in the laboratory, And the cell we used is very fragile and it will soon die leaving the culture medium. So it will not bring contamination to the environment.

c) Risks to security through malicious mis-use by individuals, groups, or countries:
All the biological materials used in our lab are safe, and all the products of the coding sequences are innocuous to human, so the risk of malicious misuse is low.

A regular safety briefing and a lecture about the basics concerning of biotechnology and genetic engineering are basic elements of our education at the SCUT. The handling of biological material and safety aspects of chemicals are explained. A safety briefing was held for all iGEM students by Zhenwu Zhang who is the responsible person for our lab safety.