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Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Project biosafety
From 2010.igem.org
Biosafety
Our project ideas would not raise any safety issue.
In our project, we mainly use competent E.coli with non-virulent strain DH5α, it is also a non-infectious host organism.
According to CDC Standard Microbiological Practices for BL1 and BL2, in order to work with E.coli (biosafety level 2)
1 Our students attended 3 hours laboratory safety talk before lab work
2 We are supervised under 3 professors and 3 instructors.
3 we have our iGEM laboratory in the cytotoxic research laboratory and the access to the lab is limited
Other guidelines from CDC are also straightly followed.
Moreover, our cultures, stocks and other regulated wastes are decontaminated before disposal by autoclaving. Even though the organisms are disposed to the public or the environment accidentally, as the strain is non-virulent and no toxic product is produced, it will not cause any infection to human or other organisms.
Our new biobrick parts mainly includes the rci part and "message" part. firstly, the "message" part is created through our software,which does not code for any kind of proteins. It can only function when it is decoded by our own software, therefore it won't cause safety issues. The second new part in our project is the rci gene, which is the main functional gene for our shufflon encryption system. However, the gene itself is not infectious and does not posses pathogenic capability or anti-drug ability, therefore it does not raise any safety issue.
Yes.
At Chinese University of Hong Kong, we have our own biosafety group which give guidelines to all of our faculty and departments for any safety issue including laboratory safety, public safety, etc. Special guidelines are given to us for handling any microorganism in the laboratory.
