We are following the official iGEM safety instructions.
We are working at the platform of
[1] Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology (iSSB), which is a research unit of Université d’Evry-Val-d’Essonne. It is fully equipped for bacterial genetics and molecular biology work in terms of devices. The lab is monitored on regular basis by a security officer of iSSB.
Our team is under daily supervision of Alfonso Jaramillo, the team direction of Bio-Synth Group of iSSB. We receive regular help as well from Ioana Popescu (Engineer and Hygiene and Security Correspondent) as well from a Ph.D student Thomas Landrain working on site. All the iSSB research team is always around to help and advise us about good laboratory practice.
a. Safety risks
Escherichia coli: we use DH5a and TOP 10 which are common laboratory strains[2], also considered as Level 1 Biosafety Containment agent. All E. coli strains we use in our experiments are non-pathogenic. Except Ampicillin and Kanamycin resistance genes there are no potentially dangerous biobricks in our constructs.
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