Team:Nanjing NFLS/qwe

From 2014hs.igem.org

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Q1

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

Q2&Q3

Q2:Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise safety issues?

Q3:Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

Q4

Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?

The biological materials used in our project are not related to pathogenicity and/or toxicity. The organism that we worked with in this project include non-pathogenic strains of E. coli, DH5α, which belongs to Risk Group 1 (no or low individual and community risk): a microorganism that is unlikely to cause human or animal disease. E. coli, DH5α has been widely used in the field of synthetic biology and its safety has long been proved. In order to test the tool system we developed, we also work on CHO cells, Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, which is widely used in genetic engineering and pharmaceutical field and proved to be safe. The coding that we inserted in to the CHO cells are basic standardized parts of GFP and RFP, which will not in any way raise safety concerns. All personnel working in the project have been trained with sufficient knowledge of laboratory safety and follow the safety regulations the university lab we worked in strictly. The entire process did not pose any danger on the researchers and shall not in case of accidental leakage. All tissues and cells are inactivated before being disposed. The standard method of inactivation is exposure to 96% formic acid overnight. The disposed materials do not in any way pose danger to either the public or the environment. In accidental leakage of the inactivated material, no serious safety problem will be caused because the tissues and non-pathogenic bacteria will only survive under strict laboratory environment inn theory.

Answer2: No, all new BioBrick parts, including CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme, guide-RNA and homologous arms, do not raised safety issues even under the case of accidental leakage. The enzyme will not pose danger by editing genes of any species unless are maliciously designed.

Answer3: Our high school, Nanjing Foreign Language School, does not have its biosafety committee or group. However, it has strict regulations regarding biosafety and laboratory safety, which are accordingly followed by all members participating this iGEM project. The China Pharmaceutical University, in which the laboratory experiments of this project is carried out, has its special office responsible for biosafety inspection. It is well aware of the ongoing of our project and has approved all usage of bio materials and equipment. We also follow the National Accreditation Criteria for Laboratory Bio-safety.

The gene editing tool kit that we designed can be applied into the deletion and knock-out of stably integrated gene system. From a biosafety perspective, this tool kit can be used to remove genetic engineering research and development projects to filter the use of antibiotic resistance genes, thereby preventing the gene spread in subsequent research and applications, improve the safety of resistance genes used.
iGEM Nanjing_NFLS