From 2009.igem.org

Safety

We have developed a risk-free project. We have accomplished the construction of a biological screen that uses a jellyfish gene, [http://partsregistry.org/wiki/index.php?title=Part:BBa_K222000 aequorin], to emit light in the presence of coelenterazine and calcium.

Our project does not raise safety issues in terms of researcher safety, public safety or environmental safety. The project can be worked on a regular molecular biology laboratory, so there is no researcher safety issue. The parts and strains we have used do not stand as toxic, harmful or somehow dangerous for the public. Finally, there are no special environmental problems apart from the regular molecular biology safety measures.

Our institutions do not have Biosafety groups that could deal with Synthetic Biology issues. Nevertheless, our research groups are involved in [http://www.sb-tarpol.eu TarPol project], where an ethical committee has been established to cope on these issues. Members of our groups are implicated in this committee. People responsible of the TarPol committee, like Antoine Danchin and Markus Schmidt, has been actively involved in the Human Practices part of our project, have been aware of it and consider that our project raises no issue in Biosafety or Biorisk. None of [http://partsregistry.org/cgi/partsdb/pgroup.cgi?pgroup=iGEM2009&group=Valencia&Done=1 our BioBricks] raises any Ethical issue.

We have made an impressive effort in the Human Practices part of the project, and we have taken conscience of any safety issue that could come from our project. We have agreed with the experts that no issue could come from our project, making it a risk-free project.