NCKU-iGEM team is concerned with biosafety and biosecurity in every
aspect of our project. We realize one major responsibility of iGEMers is to show
the public that the project as well as synthetic will not do harm to the
environment and the society. We make checks on every safety detail including
materials, lab, designed device, and every team member.
1. Material and project safety? OF COURSE
Chassis organism
We chose E. coli as our chassis organism. Three lab strains
were selected: “DH5 alpha”, “BL21(DE3)”, “W3110”, and ”W3110 (L5T7)”. These lab
strains are reported to be not pathogenic to human. We construct our design
with these strains in authorized lab (biosafety level 1 lab) only.
New parts construction
We chose E. coli as our chassis organism. Three lab strains
were selected: “DH5 alpha”, “BL21(DE3)”, “W3110”, and ”W3110 (L5T7)”. These lab
strains are reported to be not pathogenic to human. We construct our design
with these strains in authorized lab (biosafety level 1 lab) only.
2. Establishment of the iGEM lab
This is the third year since the establishment of iGEM
NCKU-Tainan team. We have raised the awareness of synthetic biology in our
campus. Mrs. Jenny Su and the College of Engineering decided to give us a
headquarter which contains a meeting room and a lab. To meet the lab standard
of CDC (Center for Disease Control), we made contact with Mrs. Liu Yee Fen, the
contact person of Center for Occupational safety and Health and Environmental
Protection, which is the authorized unit in our campus responsible for lab
safety and security. With the assistance of our instructor Dr. Ng, we
successfully certify our lab to BSL1 saftey level one lab. Mrs. Liu gave us
some lab security instructions and advice. She also suggested that each of our
members should attend the biosafety lab training program.
Expect the lab in iGEM headquarter, wet team has constructed
out design in various labs whose supervisors are Dr. I-Son Ng, Dr. I-Hsiu
Huang, Dr. Han-Ching Wang, and Dr. Hashimoto Masayuki. The labs mentioned above
are all certified biosafety level one.
3. Safety training for every teammate
It is a must for anyone to pass the authorized training section
before conducting any experiments in lab. Since our applied design must be
tested with constructed bacteria, each of our team members will have chances to
approach the lab. We decided that whole team should be certified to do the
experiments in biosafety level one lab. Team members from biotechnology have
already passed the training session, and the rest of team members have passed
the training online course. We believe that learning safety and security
knowledge lower the risk when we conducted experiments inside biolab.
4. A step toward low carbon society, a leap against wasting and pollution
Safety Design
The goal of our project is to fix CO2 emitted from industries by
using modified E.coli and produce high value compound. At the same time, we aware
of the safety concerns of introducing synthetic organisms into the environment. We
designed a bioreactor that ensures the engineered E.coli act as a closed system and
separated from the environment. Each inlet and outlet of the bioreactor is equipped
with filter too. Furthermore, uv or heat(尚未完成)
Biosafety Test
The goal of our project is to fix CO2 emitted from industries by using modified
E.coli and produce high value compound. At the same time, we aware of the safety
concerns of introducing synthetic organisms into the environment. We designed a
bioreactor that ensures the engineered E.coli act as a closed system and separated
from the environment. Each inlet and outlet of the bioreactor is equipped with
filter too which prevents the outflow of the engineered bacteria.
We tested the safety of our device by incubating bacteria inside. We collected the
waste sample from the filter and apply it on to the agar plate. Comparing with the
control group that does not passed the filter, we found out that the filter can
effectively isolate the bacteria inside our device.
In our applied design, we planned to extract protein and bioproduct from E. coli .
The waste should be then collected and stertilized. We planned to combine the waste
heat recovery system in the factory to stertilize the waste medium . One of the
main goal of our applied design, to turn waste to valuable resource, is fulfilled
in this biosafety design.