1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety?
Laboratory strains of E. coli and B. subtilis are not pathogenic, thus
not hazardous. Bacillus strain carrying a plasmid with listeriolysin
might be hazardous, so great care must be taken. But even if one does
become infected, this bacteria are unable of replicating and surviving
long inside mammalian cells. They are also incapable of spreading from
cell to cell, meaning that infection could not spread.
None of our project's ideas can cause public safety hazard. We are not
going to transform our multihost eucaryotic vector into invasive
Bacillus strain, to ensure, that no danger is caused. Listeriolysin
might raise some issues, that is why we adopted rigorous safety
protocols concerning disposal of biological waste, to prevent any GMO
organism from spreading into environment.
None of the Biobricks that we use this year may cause environmental
hazard. Plasmids containing genes coding resistance for antibiotics
such as Ampicilin, chloramfenicol and kanamicin might be hazardous if
released into environment, enlarging population of a-b resistant
bacteria. To ensure that this does not happen we adopted safety
protocols, as mentioned above.
Work in a microbiology laboratory environment:
In the lab there is work with GMO, E. coli and B.subtilis bacteria strains. Researchers have to wear lab coats and gloves.
Work with toxic chemical compounds:
Ethidium Bromide can cause cancer - is used only to visualize gels It is not added to agarose gels before running the gel.
Antibiotics: Chloramphenicol and Ampicillin:
While making antibiotics solutions from the powder the mask and safety glasses have to be worn.
Work with UV light:
UV light is a cause of cancer therefore a UV protective mask, gloves and lab coats have to be worn while working with the UV light.
2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?
In our invasion device we use previously created listeriolysin BioBrick(BBa_...), which could be potentially harmful if someone was careless enough to get infected by a bacteria strain carrying this device. Even in this case the danger is limited as strains we use are unable to spread from cell to cell and it is impossible for them to last long in mammalian cells as it was mentioned before. We minimalized the risk by thorough application of our safety protocols.
3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
There are no local biosafety groups, committees or review boards at the Polish universities, but Polish Government issued a number of guidelines for conducting work with GMO and we are doing our best following them. All necessary permissions to work with GMO were obtained by the Department where we work. Concluding, all our laboratory work is in full agreement with appropriate law acts and nothing we do could be view as illegal.
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