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

1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:

   * researcher safety,
   * public safety, or
   * environmental safety?

No. Our whole project is executed only in laboratory.

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?

The parts we used including MS2 phage don't raise any issues.

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?