Document

Demonstrate

To prove that our engineered system has to work under realistic conditions and our system complies with all rules and regulations approved by the iGEM Safety Committee. We made a video to demonstrate how our project works and it can be adapted in realistic conditions. Also, we consulted lawyers for the intellectual property copyrights and we made sure the safety of the projects. At the same time, we gave our project to several iGEMers and synthetic biologists. Some of them used it to find statistics they needed and some tested it and they gave us their feedbacks.

Demonstrate Video

Safety

Safety with BioMaster

BioMaster is a biobrick database which focuses on database integration as well as promoter prediction. The data in the BioMaster comes from databases with security certifications and declarations such as Uniprot and EPD, so the data in BioMaster is also secure. Our prediction function is only meant to provide users with a prediction result for their reference. Whether to use it depends on users’ actual situation and their own judges.

Q1: What are the functions of BioMaster?

A1: BioMaster can be used to search for detailed information of biobricks such as its functions, sites, interactions and related references. It can predict if a DNA sequence is a promoter.

Q2: How BioMaster works? A2: BioMaster is run and maintained by UESTC. Users can use it by visit our website.

Q3: Who are the users of BioMaster?

A3: Users are those who want to find information about biobricks or those who want to do some promoter prediction.

Q4: Does it have any risks in laboratory?

A4: BioMaster runs as a web page. It aims to provide more detailed and comprehensive biobrick information and accurate prediction results of promoters to synthetic biologists. We won’t use any plasmid or bacteria. No wet-lab experiments and no pollution to the environment.

Q5: Is it risky for users to use BioMaster?

A5: BioMaster runs on a computer so it does no harm to the environment and users’ health. By visiting our web page people can use BioMaster. They don’t even have to login. With no information entry, User's privacy will not be risk of disclosure.

Q6: Does BioMaster infringe on the intellectual property of others?

A6: We specifically consulted lawyer Mr. Yong’gang Zheng on intellectual property issues. The databases referenced by BioMaster are all open source, and these databases have no related statements. So, our work is reasonable and legal. We will also explain which databases BioMaster refers to. In addition, BioMaster provides links only to the literature, which can be opened directly on the relevant websites and do not constitute infringement.

Q7: Does BioMaster need to be responsible for the user's actions?

A7: BioMaster is free to use, which means that there is no interest dispute with the user. Users should adhere to the principle of voluntariness when using. So even bad result comes due to the software, we are not responsible for that

Fig.1.Meeting with the lawyer

Feedback

We invited 2018-NKU_CHINA, 2018-UESTC-China and 2018-USTC-Software to use our database. Meanwhile, we invited some previous iGEMers and professions to use it. They gave affirmation to our database and also gave us some advice to improve the database and better serve synthetic biology.

“The database is detailed and comprehensive, with relatively high practicability. However, it needs to be more aesthetically pleasing. The search results page can add a description of the search terms. And the search results can be sorted in chronological order.
Database compatibility with browsers needs to be improved and some pages have Chinese words.” —NKU_CHINA

“BioMaster is of great excellence. It indeed provides us many useful statistics for us so that we can refer to it. BioMaster brings conveniences to out experiments. It some relevant references are provided and it can display biobrick information in a visualized way would be more user-friendly.” —UESTC-China

“The UI surface is very user-friendly. However, there’s some details you should be more careful. I suggest that you should provide what medal the team won on the searching of Team Wiki.” — Pro. Zhu Lvyun in NUTD

“Your information is comprehensive and the UI surface is user-friendly. However, the ranking of search results is to be optimized when searching with iGEM_ID, such as searching for BBa_K104000, the first display of BBa_K1040001, and BBa_K104000 in the back position. You’d better give out a guidance to each information, for example, new user may not know what EPD& RegulonDB contains of.” ” —USTC-Software

Statement

We checked carefully on every database we integrated to avoid any missing possible regulation on the property of database. At the same time, we made a statement mentioned clearly what we integrated and we have no commercial intentions.