<p id="pp">One of the main factors driving our decision to focus on the use of kill switches in synthetic biology was the nature of their use in iGEM. It seemed that they were often employed as an afterthought and the dedicated kill switch section of the biosafety page on the registry had parts named "oh my god" and "test". We decided that providing better quantitative data on kill switches would be valuable.  We asked individuals from industry and academia about kill switches and how they thought they might be most effectively implemented, we used their input to inform our work inside and outside the lab.<brr><br>

                 <p id="pp">One of the main factors driving our decision to focus on the use of kill switches in synthetic biology was the nature of their use in iGEM. It seemed that they were often employed as an afterthought and the dedicated kill switch section of the biosafety page on the registry had parts named "oh my god" and "test". We decided that providing better quantitative data on kill switches would be valuable.  We asked individuals from industry and academia about kill switches and how they thought they might be most effectively implemented, we used their input to inform our work inside and outside the lab.<brr><br>

We contacted Dr Markus Gershater, the chief scientific officer at <i>Synthace Ltd</i>, to ask him what the application of kill switches might be in an industrial setting and what evidence would be satisfactory for their use. Dr Gershater gave the view that kill switches would not be as effective or economical as the physical and chemical bio-containment methods that Synthace currently employ. One of his concerns was that increasing the complexity of an industrial strain makes reproducibility and scalability more difficult. Any mis-control of the switch would incur cost as the run of that culture would die. For these reasons Dr Gershater thought that if increased containment is needed, investment in better physical containment is more effective and economical than biological methods. We decided to test how a kill switch might behave in an industrial setting by performing a continuous culture in a ministat (see <a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Project#culture">here</a> for details). In this way we could test how viable a containment strategy kill switches are when used in industry.<br><br>

We contacted Dr Markus Gershater, the chief scientific officer at <i>Synthace Ltd</i>, to ask him what the application of kill switches might be in an industrial setting and what evidence would be satisfactory for their use. Dr Gershater gave the view that kill switches would not be as effective or economical as the physical and chemical bio-containment methods that Synthace currently employ. One of his concerns was that increasing the complexity of an industrial strain makes reproducibility and scalability more difficult. Any mis-control of the switch would incur cost as the run of that culture would die. For these reasons Dr Gershater thought that if increased containment is needed, investment in better physical containment is more effective and economical than biological methods. We decided to test how a kill switch might behave in an industrial setting by performing a continuous culture in a ministat (see <a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:Exeter/Project#culture">here</a> for details). In this way we could test how viable a containment strategy kill switches are when used in industry.<br><br>