Safety

Basic Safety Questions for iGEM 2014

1. Your Training
1. Have your team members received any safety training yet?

Yes, we have already received safety training.

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

We learned about recombinant DNA technology guideline and things to be careful of when working in laboratory. And one of team members, Kenta Nomura, had a training to learn handling of hazardous materials, and he teaches us tips for experiment.

3. 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.

For detail information about safety training please refer to the site below (Japanese): http://web.jim.gifu-u.ac.jp/sienka/DNA/

2. Your Local Rules and Regulations
1. 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.

The supervisor at our institution is Professor Hiroyuki Koyama, responsible for biological safety at Gifu University. A team instructor, Akio Ebihara, had already explained to him what we were going to do in our iGEM project. He mentioned that there is no special concern in our project because our experiment is similar to a practice course for undergraduate student. And Prof. Koyama permitted us to do the project.

2. 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.

Our University is under ISO14001. We follow its rules. Law concerning the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity through regulations on the use of living modified organisms (Cartagena Agreement): http://www.gifu-u.ac.jp/images/12/rule/05dna.pdf

3. 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.lifescience.mext.go.jp/bioethics/anzen.html http://www.bch.biodic.go.jp/english/cartagena/images/e_cartagena.pdf

3. The Organisms and Parts that You Use

Species name(including strain)	Risk Group	Risk Group Source	Disease risk to humans?	Part number/name	Natural function of part	How did you acquire it?	How will you use it?
Escherichia coli(K12)	1	ABSA	yes			Instructor	building our parts
Oryza sativa	1		no	[BBa_K118023]/cenA	involved in making and decomposing sugar chain	from iGEM HQ	decompose cellulose into cellobiose
Oryza sativa	1		no	[BBa_K118022]/cex	involved in making and decomposing sugar chain	from iGEM HQ	decompose cellulose into cellobiose
Oryza sativa	1		no	[BBa_K118028]/bglx	involved in making and decomposing sugar chain	from iGEM HQ	decompose cellulose into D-glucose
T4 phage	1		no			NBRC20004 Escherichia coli phage T4	building our parts

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.

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

Since our experimental room is small, we sometime work in a crowded situations. So we need to be careful not to make a glancing hit. This might happen unexpected accidents. We use a cancer-causing reagent, ethidium bromide, and we should be careful to use it.

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

Biological materials or these products might be toxic if they escaped from our lab. Perhaps they escape by an earthquake, a fire, and so on.

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

Escaping bacteria from lab by disposing wastes without autoclave might harm the environment that includes natural life.

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

An entry to our lab space without any permission, which may occur after losing the key to our lab. The entry allows the individuals to do an abuse of the regents.

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

Follow the rule for lab safety. No entry for those who have little concern.

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.

1. 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?

A toxic protein can be produced using parts we are going to make. Any materials in our lab should not be transferred without a permission from our instructor.

2. 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.

Be careful not to talk information and details of our experiment to others.