Biosafety generally refers to the potential threats to the ecological environment and human health caused by the development and application of modern biotechnology, and the series of effective preventive and control measures taken against them. The concept of biosafety has been proposed based on the potential adverse effects of biotechnology development.

We recognize that the rapid bio-economic development driven by current biotechnology poses great risks and challenges for biosafety, and there is an urgent need to grasp the ideal balance between development, safety and health. As a group of high school students who are passionate about synthetic biology, we are actively involved in promoting the knowledge of biosafety and hope that through our efforts, more people will understand the importance of biosafety for the future of mankind.

Dual-use research of concern (DURC) describes research that is intended to provide a clear benefit, but which could easily be misapplied to do harm. It usually refers to work in the life sciences, but the principles are also applicable to other fields including engineering and information technology. (WHO 2020)

In order not to accidentally create a "biological weapon", we believe it is very important to prepare well before the experiment . Our team created a flowchart prior to the experiment in which we included multiple considerations of biosafety and biosecurity. Since we were high school students, the lab may not have been a very familiar place for us. Prior to our offline work, the entire team conducted a simulation of the lab environment in the online simulation platform labster. We made sure everyone had a basic understanding of the equipment in the lab and had some precautions to take in case of emergency.

During the design of the experiment, some members of our team took the Law and Genetics online course at Cambridge University. By taking the course, we effectively avoided many ethical or legal risks and ensured the safety of the experiment.

The laboratory we use has a biosafety level of biosafety level one. Of all the biosafety levels classified, level one is the least hazardous. According to CDC regulations, in BSL-1 laboratories, we need to wear personal protective equipment, such as white coats and gloves, goggles, etc., which we have prepared in advance during our experiments.

Since we are borrowing a commercial lab, we try to make sure that we do not touch the instruments that are not within the scope of our experiments when we conduct our own experiments.

In addition to ensuring our own safety, we believe that laboratory safety is something that everyone should pay attention to and learn from, so we organized a biosafety roundtable by contacting several igem teams through various means. In this meeting, we mainly discussed the work of each team on safety precautions. We invited Mr. Boyan Zhang from Zhejiang University, the security leader of the team that won the iGEM security award last year, to share with us their experience and their design on the gene return path.

At the same time, we also participated in the 9th cccic. during the event, we attended a security sharing session organized by the organizers and shared our team's experience and design in terms of security with everyone during the session. In particular, the discussion on the experimental challenges posed by the coronavirus resonated with many teams.

At the meantime, our team also produced a hand-drawn picture book about laboratory safety. During our experiments, we found that in Chinese public high schools, students have less access to experiments. Meanwhile, most public high school laboratories are generally poorly equipped and have relatively few instruments, which makes them rarely have the opportunity to operate experimental equipment in the laboratory themselves. But when high school students enter college they will face a lot of equipment they have not learned to use. Therefore, we believe that science lab safety is very important to prepare high school students for college, especially those who wish to study natural science subjects. As high school students, we feel the same way, and we created the picture book so that more Chinese high school students can learn about lab safety as soon as possible.

Our collaborative team, sesame_shenzhen, designed the suicide element in their genetic circuit. This inspired us to conceive on safety, our team's subject is non-invasive uric acid sensor, as a sensor, our bacterium is sealed in our detection cartridge, but as iGEM officially said, there is no container that can be 100% confidential. So we designed the hardware with a sterilant release and a deodorant release on top of our hardware. The sterilizer release is used for broad-spectrum sterilization for the engineered bacteria that we may leak, to avoid the engineered bacteria from being discharged into the sewer after use.

Due to the epidemic situation in China, our Lab safety has added epidemic prevention considerations to the traditional lab safety.

First, our team members wear masks at work and during group meetings to prevent the potential spread of disease. At the same time, the lab was cleaned and disinfected each night after all our personnel left the lab

During the experiment, we also complied with the local epidemic prevention policy for daily nucleic acid testing and ensured that there were no abnormalities in our health codes.

We believe that our vaccination measures were effective in avoiding infection with the coronavirus

In short, our team has made many contributions both inside and outside the lab. We integrate biosafety into every detail of our projects. Our genetic circuits are designed to help make synthetic biology accessible to a wide range of people outside of the laboratory as well. At the same time, our educational activities as well as our communication activities can benefit a wider audience and a larger team with a better and deeper understanding of biosafety.