Throughout the months that we carried out our experiment, we were in full
compliance with iGEM’s safety requirements of item, including safely
disposing normal waste from the lab, using personal protective equipments
such as lab coats and gloves for skin protection, prohibiting the leakage
of any genetically modified organisms outside the lab. Our project did not
involve any human experiment nor did we use any animals. In the case of any
special wastes that may not be disposed in the same way as the normal lab
waste, we hand them to professional institution to handle them.
Our experiment involves the use of Escherchia coli K-12 DH5a, a safe engineering strain(biosafety level 1). Knowing the potential of infections if it comes into contact with food or hands and get ingested, we tried to eliminate risks when dealing with it and avoid direct human contact. At the very start of our project, Mr. Wang boxiang and Miss Wang gaoyan, our safety instructors, taught us about the basic safety principles and dangerous acts that we should not do while doing an experiment. Every one of us received safety training, and we are aware of the dangers such as accidental ingestion, leakage, scratches caused by tube breakage, and also learnt how to avoid them. Mostly importantly, our safety instructors do weekly checkups on our plans and experiments to ensure and manage the safety of our experiment.
The experts and instructors on our team all came from professional labs and are all well acquainted with these experiments. They have sufficient experiences in dealing with bacteria, so they are fully aware of the risks and are capable of managing them and ensuring our experiment is carried out safely.
Moreover, our team also reached out to professionals and experts in our community to ask for constructive advice for our projects. In these social science research, we made sure that the participant gave us consent to ask them question and that their participations are fully voluntary.
Our project itself is not a directly applicational design so that there is no direct danger for the people who use it as a basic element to further construct their specific programs. And our project can be used to enhance the safety of other projects. During our collaboration with team BHSF_ND, their counselor pointed out that our circuit could be constructed into a suicide system. When detecting the termination signals, the working circuit will express suicide order and thus reduce the undesirable leakage. Surely we cannot ensure that our design will not be used in the construction of biological system with potential risks, but we believe the precise description of the element’s function will assist the accurate evaluation of system and thus minimize this probability.
