Safety

For iGEM 2009 teams are asked to detail how they approached any issues of biological safety associated with their projects. Therefore we should consider the following four questions:

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

• researcher safety
• public safety, or
• environmental safety?
  

In our opinion none of our BioBricks or ideas raise any safety issues as mentioned here.

2) Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
There is in our Department, Department of Biotechnology, indeed a biosafety officer(BSO) who is responsible for the safety in the labs. In general in the Netherlands there is a very strict regulation about biosafety and working with genetically modified organisms.

3) What does your local biosafety group think about your project?
We spoke to the BSO about our project. We had to provide the BSO a table containing the micro organisms, plasmids and genes we used for our project. As long we do not infringe the rules it is fine.
The Dutch ministry of Housing, Spatial planning and the environment made an overviwof micro organisms and plasmids which we are allowed to use for genetic engineering, we are also able to use derivatives of these plasmids. We also had to check the list of micro organisms, plasmids and genes we used.

4) Do any of the new BioBrick parts that you made this year raise any safety issues?

• If yes, did you document these issues in the Registry?

since the new BioBrick parts we made this year are