Team:SYSU-Software/Safety
Overview
Our team consider our project and the situation in our country seriously so as to act appropriately and safely both inside and outside of the lab. Of course, every part of our project was done without SARS-CoV-2 virus. Other efforts we had done will be shown below in Q&A.
Bio-safety Ethnics
Q: Is Maloadis biologically ethical ?
A: We discussed bio-safety problems with Professor Zhumei He. He told us that there are four fundamental principles of bioethics: Autonomy - Rights of self-determination; Benefience - To do well and to promote well-being; Non-maleficence - To do no harm or to avoid doing harm; Justice - Treat everyone alike.
During the process of building our software, we should always remember these principles. Besides, during the "build" phrase, we may not like what our users had created -- they may produce gene sequences that encode unknown protein and pollute the ecosystem.So, we need to remind our users to consider the potential risks seriously, and not to bring any organism out of the lab. For more information, click here to go to our Human Practice pages.
https://2020.igem.org/Team:SYSU-Software/Human_Practices
Safety in human practices
Q: Did the activity of human practice infringe others' rights?
A: No. All the photos and interviews we have shown on wiki, website, poster, promotion video and so on get the permission from interviewees. In addition, all of our activities got relevant organism's permission and are in laws.
Chinese and English version of our questionnaire's consent agreement
Q: Did we perform activities appropriately?
A: We cautiously obey all relevant international, regional, national, local or institutional laws, rules, regulations or policies, including national or institutional biosafety and biosecurity rules.
Intellectual property protection
Q: In which part of Maloadis should we pay special attention to intellectual property protection?
A: We built a database in Maloadis which incorporated many existed database -- iGEM Registry, Uniprot, RegulonDB. We have obeyed their terms of use and citation directions of databases:
Uniport: https://www.expasy.org/terms-of-use
Regulon DB:
http://regulondb.ccg.unam.mx/menu/download/full_version/terms_and_conditions.jsp
B: We obtained the open Synthetic Biology articles from ACS Synthetic Biology and we obeyed it's Accessibility Statement.
ACS: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/accessibility-statement.html
User information safety
Q: Will Maloadis infringe users' privacy?
A: No, it won't. Maloadis is designed to be use without account, so no private information will be gathered. But we would like to claim that, to avoid legal disputes, once uploaded, users' data belongs to Maloadis.
Safety in wet lab
Q: Is our wet-lab experiments safe?
A: Yes. All the materials are chosen cautiously with the help of instructors and advisors. We only used Escherichia coli as chassis, and no hazardous chemicals were used. All the experiments are conducted in professor's lab in School of Life Science, Sun Yat-Sen University. The regulation of Laboratory safety and productivity management by Sun Yat-Sen University and Laboratory Safety Guidebook by Sun Yat-Sen University are conducted throughout the experiments, so there is no need to worry that they will escape the lab and pose risks to us, to our community and the environment.
Q: How were the genetic circuits designed before the experiments?
A: The circuits are designed with the help of Maloadis, all parts used in the experiments are 100% safe.
Q: How were the genetic circuits designed before the experiments?
A: We all received guidance about biosafety from professor before conducting our experiments. Before the experiments, we were equipped with experimental cloths, along with gloves, masks and etc.