Safety Questions

Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of research safety, public safety, or environmental safety?

Yes, our projects do raise some safety concerns. Although the team is working with a lab strain of E. coli that must be provided with the proper nutrients to survive, we are also working with antibiotic resistance. Although we do our best to apply sterile technique to our work in the lab, there is still a chance that a wild pathogenic bacteria may enter reactions. In this event, a wild bacteria may have the chance to acquire an antibiotic resistant plasmid. If it were to escape, this bacteria could exchange this Resistance factor with other bacteria that may be problematic or pathogen. This could in turn produce a pathogenic bacteria that is difficult to kill. There is also the concern of any of our lab bacteria escaping and surviving long enough to transmit their Resistance factor to other bacteria.

In either of these cases, not only is the lab staff at risk of infection, but if the bacteria make it to the environment, there is the possibility of danger to the public or the environment depending on the strain of bacteria.

Since some of our project ideas require the use of specific antibiotics, their use and disposal must be taken into consideration. Some of these compounds are toxic or even carcinogenic to humans and must be handled appropriately. These compounds may also be toxic to the environment or public if they were to not be disposed of properly.

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Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?

None of our BioBrick components raise any safety issues other than the antibiotic resistance they carry. Steps must be taken to ensure the antibiotic resistance is not accidentally imparted to a pathogen bacterial strain. Otherwise all of the BioBricks created by the team are for analytical purposes and can only produce fluorescent proteins when correctly used.

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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?

Yes, there is a biological safety review board at the university. They have approved the work we are doing for the competition.

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?

Another way to ensure safety could be to create a new lab strain of E.coli that has more auxotrophic requirements. This would make it more difficult for a modified bacteria to escape and possibly spread a Resistance factor or Virulence factor.

Parts could be made safer by introducing more regulations components. By making the bacteria require cofactors to function or to live in a n antibiotic containing environment would help to ensure containment of the strain begin studied. You could also make it more difficult for the new BioBricks to be transmitted in an active form to an undesired bacterial strain.