Team:Groningen/publicsafety

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Revision as of 01:10, 2 September 2012

During our project discussions and our presentations to the public, it became clear that the association of meat and bacteria being close to each other, is not easily accepted. That’s why decided to take extra care when we designed our indication sticker, to be absolutely sure there is no possibility that our Bacillus or its spores are able to come in the environment or on the preserved meat, possibly endangering the public and environment.

We consulted specialized companies to participate and contribute in our project using their knowledge of materials. A good idea for preventing introduction of GMO’s into the environment, is the use of nano pores. The material for this “sticker” is TPX® Polymethylpentene, a strong polymer that is will ensure no bacteria will not come in contact with the meat, but still allows the volatiles to reach the bacteria. This material is approved by FDA-standards and EU-food-standards.

But not only the sticker design ensures the safety of the public, also the nutrient composition in the sticker ensures Bacillus will only germinate and grow when the sticker is still intact. And even when our Bacillus is exposed to an environment that is favorable for growth, the production of the pigment will ensure that the bacterium kills itself, because the pigment is toxic for Bacillus. Further the strain we will use in our final product is considered a food-grade strain. The genetic modification done to this strain only consist of adding of a plasmid containing promoter regions from the genome of ''B. subtilis'' and parts from other biobricks that were found to have no dangerous effects for humans.

The find out more on the effect of our product on the public we want to contact the voedsel en waren authoriteit of the Dutch government.

BioBricks


We did not find urgent safety issues with our biobricks. The promoters were taken from the genome of B.subtilis 168 and are natural gene parts. Furthermore the other parts of our biobricks are parts taken from the biobricks in the registry. Also final product does not contain an antibiotic resistance marker.

Biosafety group


Every research facility has staff responsible for the safety of the labs where people work with GMO. The Rijksuniveriteit of Groningen is no exception. There are four biological safety officers each charged with a different aspects of safety (Site manager, Microorganisms, ecology and plants, animal safety) We invited Dr. Juke Lolkema, the safety officer in charge the safety in working with microorganisms, to give a lecture about GMOs and safety in the lab. Dr. Lolkema is responsible for the maintenance of safe microbial techniques in the whole life science building (Linneausborg). During this lecture we asked about the safety aspects of our project. He raised an issue we needed to address: how to kill the bacteria after use? The pigment product was observed to be toxic for certain bacteria we need to test whether is this the case for B. subtilis nato. If so the pigment will serve as a kill switch and kills the bacteria after use. If the pigment does not have a toxic effect on this strain of B. subtilis, we want to incorporate a kill switch in the plasmid that is activated after pigment production. In either case after pigment production the bacteria will be killed.