OVERVIEW

Ultimately, synthetic biology is just a tool to target local problems and serve the development of humanity, rather than posing the safety and well-being of people at risk. With this in mind, we recognise the unavoidable implications of all synthetic biology projects like ours from the perspective of biosafety, biosecurity, and ethics. We made careful and deliberate choices in our experimental designs and other aspects of the wet lab to minimise the potential risks and engaged in in-depth discussion and thought processes to evaluate whether our current investigation and further steps could be made more ethical and safer. It was also made clear to us that AI-assisted de novo designs of biological components, as the biosensor system we used, could be an incredibly interesting and debatable topic in terms of its regulations. Lastly, to summarise what we have learned through our incremental progress towards knowledge, understanding, and tools of biosafety, biosecurity, and ethics, we compiled a document for teaching materials to educate the young generation of scientists on these important topics.