Team:Harvard/safety

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safety

To address potential safety issues with our project, we were asked by iGEM to answer the following questions:

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

    In terms of researcher and public safety, all research was performed in Biosafety Level 1 (BSL1) facilities, following all local and federal regulations with regards to BSL1 research. Any version of the iGarden toolkit meant for use by the general public would require additional precautions to prevent spread of genetically modified plants into the environment. To this end, we decided that any finalized toolkit would require a robust Genetic Fence.



  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?

    We recommend that any groups that intend to utilize our parts and devices follow established guidelines for the research of transgenic plants. For our project, all arabidopsis research was performed indoors in a BSL1 laboratory setting. All parts in agrobacterium integration vectors submitted to the registry will be annotated as such, with the recommendation that they only be integrated into plants by researchers familiar with plant genetic techniques. In the future, we would like to deploy the iGarden kit to a wider audience, but that will require the inclusion of the completed genetic fence, along with regulatory approval.



  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?

 
  1. In terms of researcher and public safety, all research was performed in Biosafety Level 1 (BSL1) facilities, following all local and federal regulations with regards to BSL1 research. Any version of the iGarden toolkit meant for use by the general public would require additional precautions to prevent spread of genetically modified plants into the environment. To this end, we decided that any finalized toolkit would require a robust Genetic Fence.
  2. We recommend that any groups that intend to utilize our parts and devices follow established guidelines for the research of transgenic plants. For our project, all arabidopsis research was performed indoors in a BSL1 laboratory setting. All parts in agrobacterium integration vectors submitted to the registry will be annotated as such, with the recommendation that they only be integrated into plants by researchers familiar with plant genetic techniques. In the future, we would like to deploy the iGarden kit to a wider audience, but that will require the inclusion of the completed genetic fence, along with regulatory approval.
  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?

 

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