Human practice

Holding a seminar attracted students to synthetic biology

We held a seminar for high school students and 35 students attended.
In this seminar, many people had got interested in molecular biology. Moreover, more than 10 students told us they had got attracted to synthetic biology and especially in iGEM. This means the seminar was successfully contributed to future iGEM participant.
The seminar was held on 30th July 2010 at a school, SEG (Scientific Education Group), which is one of our sponsors. This was led by Ryo Taniuchi and Ryo Kariyazono, members of UT-Tokyo team.
We made a lecture of 4 hours on molecular biology and synthetic biology. For students to easily understand,　we effectively utilized visual materials, for example CGs that was broadcasted by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). We also had a discussion time with students. It was an exciting seminar.
The contents of the lecture are below: ・About GFP ( its contributions to biology by visualizing molecules and cells. Hot topic of 2009 Nobel Prize ) ・basics of molecular cell biology (about DNA, the central dogma, etc) ・an introduction to Synthetic Biology

Collaboration

On August 23, UT-Tokyo and teams from 4 eastern Japanese universities (Tokyo_Tech, Tokyo_Metropolitan, Tokyo-NoKoGen & Chiba) held a meetup at Suzukakedai, hometown of Tokyo_Tech. In this meetup Tokyo_Tech and we discussed the weakness of their and our projects and got ideas to improve.

Safety

Our whole project is executed only in laboratory. Especially, the assay of MS2 virus is done only in clean bench. The parts we used including MS2 phage don't raise any issues because MS2 virus is not infectious to human or have toxicity. MS2 virus is infectious to E.coli but there is a lot of E.coli infected by MS2 virus around the world.

3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

We have concluded that the method of containment the applicant implemented fulfills the safety requirements we have set forth. The applicant possesses the ability to practice laboratory safety, and the relevant equipment abides to Japanese law.

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?