Safety

In the Lab

All of our team members received safety training and lab procedure education before starting any work in the lab. We also did a middle-term safety meeting to ensure our safety protocols were observed. We specifically focused on emergency rules, waste disposal, cleanliness, and the use of any laboratory apparatuses. This was all done in accordance with the instruction of Shanghai Jiaotong University Assets Management Bureau, which is responsible for biological safety matter.

All work carried out was within the biosafety guidelines, WS233-2002 which is established by Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China, and other related guidelines.

Project safety

The Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 and E. coli strains used are not thought to pose any risk to the safety and health of the general public as they would not be able to compete outside the lab.

Furthermore, the potential to misuse components of our project is limited. It may make being able to desalinate more accessible to the general public or 'DIY Bio' labs. People with malicious intentions might use our Biobricks producing toxic proteins or other harmful substances. This, however is a problem shared by all iGEM and synthetic biology projects and not unique to our work.

Industry safety procedure

As an iGEM project, we shall take responsibility for our safety problem in many ways. In this section, we have to describe our idea about how to produce a safety product water and to treat other sub product properly after all.

Since this is related to process flow, this part is mainly discussed in human practice secession with the combination of lab work. However, we will briefly introduce the elements inside which ensures the safety.

Safety product water

The safety is ensured with following three steps of process flow. These steps have its own main function as well as safety function to make sure the last product is eligible.

Sub product

The main difference of our project and normal desalination process is the bio-mass. As we discussed in HP- cell-water separation, we are considering stabilizing the cells to make the after process easier. Yet, we also look for a way to make use of cyanobacteria when it is only for single use.

In fact, the utilizing of cyanobacteria has been studied long time before. In 1990s, Japan have already successfully utilizing all components of the cyanobacteria, producing 120~180 ton fertilizers and providing profit that cover 30% of its utilizing fees (Hailin,2008). Now, this area includes biofuels, foods and feeds, and fertilizer. The most recent utilizing methods start to focus on extracting important natural components from the cells. The after use of cyanobacteria can be well connected to those area. Even though we are not sure if this will bring other sub product which raise safety concerns, this will be a topic that is far from our project and not be discussed in this secession.

The other sub product is shared in all the desalination industry, brine. The utilizing of brine is a part of the main focus of national strategy in China. Apparently there’s not a very effective way to use it, so most of the plant is discharging it. Yet, this is a general problem shared by all desalination methods and not unique to our work. Therefore, we will not discuss this problem further.

Protocol and index

Supervising is very important during industry process. Testing at every gate will provide a more detail data about how the flow is running and what might go wrong. Especially, improper supervising in water industry will cause massive accidents. Therefore, we also consider some important point and index to detect frequently.

Above, we discussed the safety in four aspects: lab, project, industry, supervising protocols. Some part of our discussion needs to be further established when the project applies to real circumstances.

Reference

Bio-X Institutes

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

800, Dongchuan Road 200240, Shanghai, China

kariny888@sjtu.edu.cn