From 2010.igem.org

Revision as of 21:17, 26 October 2010

Human Practices & Safety

What does safety mean to us?

The understanding of safety guidelines, the reflection on related issues and the respect of those practices is tremendously important for us. During the process of our work, we therefore continuously discussed and reasoned about potential ethical and safety problems, which could arise from our project. We always strictly follow safety practices guidelines in the lab and respect all the rules and regulations. But this is not enough. This page represents our reflection on an issue, that too often gets forgotten. We use the iGEM [1] guideline and its key questions for our documentation:

  1.  Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:
         * researcher safety,
         * public safety, or
         * environmental safety?
  2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes,
         * did you document these issues in the Registry?
         * how did you manage to handle the safety issue?
         * How could other teams learn from your experience?
  3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
         * If yes, what does your local biosafety group think about your project?
         * If no, which specific biosafety rules or guidelines do you have to consider in your country?
  4. 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?

OUR ANSWERS:

1. Researcher safety: No. The use of certain chemicals is inevitable, but we wear gloves, googles and lab coat for protection. Public and environmental safety: No, there is no environmental threat. We exclusively work with bacterial strains which cannot survive outside the lab. Furthermore, we have special waste containers for biological material and do not introduce any potentially harmful material to the environment. We have-as most labs, air filtration and we do not work with pathogens.

2. No, our BioBricks are not a matter of concern at all.

3.

4. A commonly shared concern in biosafety is the idea, that GMO's could be released to the natural environment, where wildtype bacteria could acquire novel pathogenic tools via horizontal gene transfer. Such bacterial strains, providing a powerful toolbock, which could quickly multiply pathogenity, must be designed in such a way, that they cannot survive in a natural environment, so that their genetic toolbox cannot be spread throug evolutionary mechanisms.

Documentation and management of safety issue

Parts Devices and systems Cell chassis enhancement

Biosafety engineering

Designing and using a safer host organims/chassis

Public perception of risks and safety issues

Playing by the rules

Playing by the rules is not just a slogan. For playing by the rules, we first have to know what the rules are and understand them. Millions of human lives as well as an incredibly high amount of funds have already been wasted by a lack of reflection and precaution. To prevent history from repeating itself, we rapidly consulted the most relevant resources for (bio)safety issues:

   iGEMs page on safety issues: https://2010.igem.org/Safety
   Verordnung über den Umgang mit Organismen in der Umwelt: Freisetzungsverordnung
   Verordnung über den Umgang mit Organismen in geschlossenen Systemen: Einschliessungsverordnung

Others:

• Swiss Federal Legislation: Bases Biotechnology

References

[1] Schmidt M.: Diffusion of synthetic biology: a challenge to biosafety. 2008. Systems and Synthetic Biology. Vol.2(1-2):1-6

[2] Schmidt M.: Xenobiology: a new form of life as the ultimate biosafety tool. 2010. Bioessays 32:322-331

[3] Tucker JB and Zilinska's: The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Biology . The new Atlantis. Spring 2006, p.25-45

[4] HSE: The SACGM Compendium of guidance Part 2: Risk assessment of genetically modified microorganisms. 2009

[5] Schmidt M.: Do I understand what I can create? Biosafety issues in synthetic biology. Chapter 6 in: Schmidt M. Kelle A. Ganguli A, de Vriend H. (Eds.) 2009. Synthetic Biology. The Technoscience and its Societal Consequences. Springer Academic Publishing

[6] Barbara Johnson: Understanding, Assessing, and Communicating Topics Related to Risk in Biomedical Research Facilities. 2001. Anthology of Biosafety IV - Issues in Public Health Biological Safety Association.