Biosafety & Biosecurity

Synthetic biology, as a new branch of biological research, is occupied with the creation of artificial biomolecules and complex biostructures, up to complete artificial organisms. There is an obvious concern in creating such new synthetic biological entities that they could theoretically constitute a biological threat to human beings or other living organisms. For this reason, AbD Serotec takes an ethical approach to synthetic biology and follows the industry standards  for biosafety and biosecurity defined by the International Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB: http://www.ia-sb.eu/)  .

The IASB brings together companies whose products or services are related to synthetic biology. In the main these are companies concerned with the synthesis of genes or of whole DNA sequences. Together these companies are concerned with bioethical and biosecurity questions raised by synthetic biology by formulating industry standards that should prevent the technologies from being abused.

While the ultimate aim is to ensure the full potential benefits of synthetic biology are realized, we do work with national and international authorities to control and limit access to synthetic sequences and biomolecules that could constitute a biosecurity threat.

The IASB Code of Conduct for Best Practices in Gene Synthesis