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From 2010.igem.org

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 for carrying our our assays, but we wear gloves, safety googles and a lab coat for protection.
• Public and environmental safety: No, there is no environmental threat originating from our activities. We exclusively work with non-pathogenic strands. Furthermore, we have (as most other labs) special waste containers for biologically and chemically hazardous material and we do not introduce any potentially harmful material into the environment. Even the air in our lab is filtrated before being released.

In addition to this, as our project does neither involve releasing organisms into the environment, applying them to humans, nor reorganizing large section of the bacteria´s genome, we reasoned that the experiments did not merit any specific treatment from that regulated in the Swiss laws concerning genetic engineering.

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

3. Before starting with the wet lab work, we consulted all relevant sections in the [http://www.parlament.ch/e/wissen/li-bundesverfassung/pages/default.aspx: Swiss Federal Constitution] and it appears to us that our project does not raise any safety issues. There are a few general (chemical and biological safety) agencies, but these are not enough specialized institutions for evaluating our iGEM research project. Instead, it seemed reasonable to us, to discuss the project with our professor Sven Panke, who is a member of the [http://www.synbiosafe.eu/index.php?page=advisory-board: External Advisory Board] of [http://www.synbiosafe.eu/: Synbiosafe] and has therefore much expertise in this area. We together reflected about the safety issues our project could potentially give rise to and after careful evaluation, we came to the conclusion that this does not harm nor the researchers, nor the social or natural environment.

Of course, we additionally take all precautionary measures which are appropriate when working in a laboratory!

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 toolbox, which could quickly multiply pathogenity, must be designed in such a way, that they can neither survive in a natural environment (outside the lab), nor contaminate it with the engineered sequences, so that their genetic toolbox cannot be spread through evolutionary mechanisms.

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: [http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/sr/814_911/index.html: Freisetzungsverordnung]
   Verordnung über den Umgang mit Organismen in geschlossenen Systemen: [http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/sr/814_912/index.html: Einschliessungsverordnung]

Others:

• Swiss Federal Constitution: [http://www.bafu.admin.ch/biotechnologie/02618/index.html?lang=en:Legal 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] [http://www.absa.org/0100johnson.html: Barbara Johnson: Understanding, Assessing, and Communicating Topics Related to Risk in Biomedical Research Facilities. 2001. Anthology of Biosafety IV - Issues in Public Health] [http://www.absa.org/0100johnson.html:American Biological Safety Association].