Team:Queens Canada/Project/Intro
From 2011.igem.org
A component of this year’s project involves working with the organism E. faecium. This bacterium is capable of colonizing the intestine of C. elegans and breaking down polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. E. faecium is a natural component of the human gut microflora. However, this organism can also act as a human pathogen and requires BSL-2 level laboratory clearance2. MSDS guidelines will be strictly observed when working with this bacterium in the appropriate laboratory. All work done with E. faecium will be for proof of concept purposes, to investigate the potential of manipulating the natural relationship between E. faecium and C. elegans. We have no intention of releasing a worm loaded with bacteria into the environment.
As a machine designed to chemotax toward toxic compounds, our organism poses little threat to the environment. By contrast, our organism could prove beneficial to the environment, and by extension, human health. All our biobricks target intracelluar pathways within C. elegans. We judge it unlikely that a mutation in this kind of biobrick would result in harm to humans or the environment. Mutations in our biobricks would lead to deactivation of our imported GPCRs, and we would not expect this to alter the ability of the worm to survive and out-compete other organisms. Overall, C. elegans can be considered safer than E. coli, the standard synthetic biology chassis, because the worm is not capable of horizontal gene transfer.
Dr. Ian Chin-Sang and Kenton Ko are two of the team’s Faculty Advisors this year, and have provided the team with lab space in which we conduct all of our wet work. They are all members of the Queen’s Biohazards Committee and have ensured that we work within the appropriate biosafety regulations. Furthermore, all of our team members have undergone WHMIS and radiation safety training, as safety is one of our top priorities.