Biosafety & Ethics

All our experiments and procedures were carried out under appropriate biosafety conditions. Our university allowed us to perform our experiments under supervision of our PI. The PI of our team is Professor Mark Isalan who is a group leader at the Imperial College London Synthetic Biology hub. As a part of our safety introduction, we undertook training in laboratory biosafety, waste management, how to check for the hazard level of chemicals (R and S records), work and safety equipment, emergency shower, eye shower, what to do in case of an emergency (fire, accident), where to store equipment and chemicals and how to handle them. The biosafety level of our laboratory is BSL1 and all of our work was done under those conditions.

We autoclaved all waste leaving the lab which had or might have been in contact with microorganisms. All personnel were required to wear lab coats after entering the laboratory, and disinfected our hands after entering and before leaving the lab.

Every person who entered the laboratory needed an access card to enter the building and the laboratory. The access cards are administered by the Imperial staff after safety inductions are completed.

To minimise unwanted outcomes, we kept away any bacterial pathogens that could be responsive to the AHL molecules we were working with. We were also mindful of how we communicated our project and the potential applications of our system.

Our work will mainly influence other researchers in synthetic biology or microbiology. Our project offers a new tool for studying synthetic biology rather than a direct real-world application, by allowing genetic circuits with activator-repressor functions to be built more efficiently and with less parts. A proof-of-concept orthogonal quorum sensing system will allow circuits to be activated in parallel to be implemented on a population-wide scale.