Team:UST Beijing/Safety

We never forgot safety issues.

We asked ourselves the following four questions, followed by serious discussions.

Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety?

Since modern time molecular biology and gene engineering is a "reverse engineering" process, which means that we discover and acquire research tools from the existing genes and structures, our iGEM projects in theory might influence natural and existing biological structures and functions in our laboratory. However, any reagents made in our lab is not infectious or contiguous; even in the case of being released by accident, will not impose safety threats to our lab members, people around us, general public, or environment in general. Early pioneers of molecular biology developed a self-disciplined code of ethics to prevent intentional usage of biological reagents, and engineered a stack of laboratory-dependent species for research-only use to prevent unintentional release and contamination of the environment. We plan to inherit the high standard ethical code of action and common molecular biology reagents to meet the requirement for human and environmental safety. In addition, we will introduce biosafety issues and guide-lines to the undergraduate students of life science major as an inseparable part of the academic curriculum to advocate biosafety awareness and promote biosafety education.