Safety Questions

Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researcher safety, public safety or environmental safety

Researchers work with safety guidelines that must be upheld by any lab to ensure the safety necessary to work with bacteria. The Cellular Logbook does not raise any immediate suspicion of potential hazards, since non-pathogenic bacteria or bacterial product was used. iGEM Amsterdam is aware that introducing non-endogenous genes to E. coli might give rise to unexpected metabolic toxic products that could threaten the safety of the researcher and/or public. The general ML-I and ML-II regulations have been respected at all times. No additional laboratory safety rules were considered necessary for the purpose of this project.

The greatest concern arises in cases where the Cellular Logbook would be used for environmental measurements. These cases would involve the use of a semi-permeable biofilm that would contain the bacteria and prevent release in the environment. Another safety measure thought of involves the reduction of the bacterial growth rate, hence excluding potential invasion of the natural biosphere. However, none of the immediate project plans involve release of the genetically modified bacteria into the environment. In this view, the project ideas do not pose any threat to both the public and the environmental safety. Each application that will be brought forward involving interaction with the natural environment will remain theoretical for the duration of the project.

Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes, did you document these issues in the Registry? how did you manage to handle the safety issue? How could other teams learn from your experience?

The main components used for our construct assembly involved biobricks provided by iGEM headquarters, a methyltransferase synthesised by a company and thus has been subjected to vigorous testing, and finally a polydactyl Zinc-Finger obtained from a research group at Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC), The Netherlands.[1] The above-mentioned research group did not address any particular safety issues. Xu et al introduced M.ScaI into E. coli in one of their previous studies.[2] Based on this knowledge, it is very unlikely that the M.ScaI would render E. coli pathogenic or would pose a threat of any kind to the researcher. The methyltransferase M.ScaI comes from Streptomyces caespitosus which is known as a non-pathogenic bacteria.

Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution? If yes, what does your local biosafety group think about your project? If no, which specific biosafety rules or guidelines do you have to consider in your country?

Dr. Pernette J. Verschure, one of the iGEM team advisors, is tasked with overseeing biosafety at the lab where we have perfomed all our experiments, i.e. the Systems and Synthetic Biology/Nuclear Organization Group at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (SILS), University of Amsterdam. Dr. Verschure takes care of the GMO database, safety, and official registration of GMOs (i.e. GGO 01-045, 01-052 and 02-241). Dr. Verschure is closely involved with the the Cellular Logbook project, attends our meetings, and keeps an eye to ensure we maintain a safe working environment. Furthermore we have to abide to the biosafety regulation policy of the Dutch government. This is monitored/organized by the RIVM and regulated via permits and GGO’s.[3]

Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?

When working with GMOs or planning to create GMOs there should be easy access to any work already done on the matter. A central database in which all bio-engineering safety data would be stored and catalogued could greatly help in this respect. Alternatively, an active discussion panel where project ideas can be discussed and addressed regarding their expected and perhaps unexpected safety issues.

Reference List

1. de,P.S., Neuteboom,L.W., Pinas,J.E., Hooykaas,P.J., & van der Zaal,B.J. ZFN-induced mutagenesis and gene-targeting in Arabidopsis through Agrobacterium-mediated floral dip transformation. Plant Biotechnol. J. 7, 821-835 (2009).

2. Xu,S.Y. et al. Cloning and expression of the ApaLI, NspI, NspHI, SacI, ScaI, and SapI restriction-modification systems in Escherichia coli. Mol. Gen. Genet. 260, 226-231 (1998).

3. http://www.biosafety-europe.eu/d20public_300309.pdf