Team:Valencia/Safety

Safety

Please use this page to answer the safety questions posed on the safety page.

Safety description

The general public expects laboratories to act responsibly and not to expose the community to biorisks, to follow safe working practises and to follow ethical code of conduct. It is the duty of lab managers and workers to prove that the biorisks inherent to lab work are controlled with appropriate

1. Would the materials used in your project and/or your final product pose?
   1. Risks to the safety and health of team members or others in the lab
      Our project involves research and development of gene manipulation in Escherichia coli and Synechocystis sp. PCC6803. These bacteria don´t raise and issues regarding pathogenicity, infectivity or toxicity. We are planning on testing the efficacy of our system using non-pathogenic E. coli so there are no other risks for the team members apart from the ordinary laboratory handling.
   2. Risks to the safety and health of the general public if released by design or accident
      Our design doesn't involve the release of any microorganism in any way. Would, by accident, such a thing occur, Synechocystis or E. coli wouldn't raise any concerns regarding public health and safety since they are non-pathogen and widely distributed. The bacteriocin-producer E. coli is a genetically modified organism so, while we don't think it would cause any problems, we still have thought a control mechanism to avoid accidental release in case our project would make it to the general public: Working with an auxotroph strain of E. coli or with a conditional-lethal mutation.
   3. Risks to environmental quality if released by design or accident
      As we said in the previous question, neither Escherichia coli nor Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 pose any threat to the environment or raise other security concerns.
   4. Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups or states
      Given the specificity of bacteriocins, we don't think there could be a malicious misuse of our design. The produced peptides are only capable of killing some Enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli and Salmonella in a proper environment with proper media culture and substrates that allows bacteriocin-producing bacterial growth.
      Furthermore we have agreed a Deontological Code to guarantee the spirit of the project, which is disinfecting water with a social benefit. People wanting to work with our systems will be able to do so only by agreeing to such Deontological Code. Our system and its technology shall never oppose human rights laws or be used in order to make unethical financial profit.
      
      
2. Specifically, are any parts or devices in your project associated with (or known to cause):
   • Pathogenicity, infectivity, or toxicity?
     We found no evidence of toxicity in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803, because most of the cyanobacteria literature describes Synechocystis sp. (order Chroococcales) as non-toxic. There are, however, some claims of toxic effects caused by Synechocystis toxins in two publications (Martins et al. 2005; Nagel and Gerwick, 1995), but due to the great variability among Synechocystis genera we are confident that our strain, which has been used in molecular laboratories labs for four decades, is not producing these toxins. Would our work, or any other published work, raise a slight evidence that our strain is a toxin producer, we would drop the use of it.
   • Threats to environmental quality? Security concerns?
     Escherichia coli and Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 don't pose any threat to the environment or raise other security concerns as we will be following the regular molecular biology safety measures.
     
   1. If your response to any of the questions above is yes,
      • Explain how you addressed these issues in project design and while conducting laboratory work.
        Our iGEM project aims at the development of a water disinfection prototype. We do not plan to work outside the lab and any spills done will be due to accidents. In case this project is successful and it’s possible to have a real-life system that disinfects water, then we have in mind a control mechanism to avoid accidental release and impact on environment and people: Working with and auxotroph strain of E. coli or with a conditional-lethal mutation.
      • Describe and document safety, security, health and/or environmental issues as you submit your parts to the Registry.
        We will properly document all parts that are part of this project along with a copy of our Deontological Code so that the spirit of the projects remains and it’s not misused.
        
        
3. Under what biosafety provisions will / do you operate?
   1. Does your institution have its own biosafety rules and if so what are they? Provide a link to them online if possible
      Our institutions do not have its own biosafety rules, but we follow the national biosafety regulations from our country and also the EU directives regarding biosafety in laboratory.
   2. Does your institution have an Institutional Biosafety Committee or equivalent group? If yes, have you discussed your project with them? Describe any concerns or changes that were made based on this review.
      Our institutions do not have Biosafety groups that could deal with Synthetic Biology issues. Nevertheless, some of the research groups that organize Valencia iGEM 2011 have been involved in TarPol project, where an ethical committee has been was established to cope on these issues. If needed we will contact members of the TarPol Committee like Antoine Danchin and Markus Schmidt, and we plan to get them involved in our Human Practices in order to consider issues in Biosafety or Biorisk.
   3. Will / did you receive any biosafety and/or lab training before beginning your project? If so, describe this training.
      All team members have received a general formation to work in the lab that includes basic safety issues, such as microbial handling, chemical hazards and GMO contention policies.
   4. Does your country have national biosafety regulations or guidelines? If so, provide a link to them online if possible.
      Our country has a wide list of biosafety and laboratory guidelines from the National Institute of Security and Sanitation at Work, (INSHT, Instituto Nacional de Seguridad e Higiene en el Trabajo), some of these guidelines are listed below.
      i. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/501a600/ntp_585.pdf Biological risk prevention in the laboratory: Work with bacteria]
      ii. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/501a600/ntp_520.pdf Biological risk prevention in the laboratory: Work with viruses]
      iii. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/501a600/ntp_539.pdf Biological risk prevention in the laboratory: Work with fungi]
      iv. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/501a600/ntp_517.pdf Risk prevention in the laboratory. Use of personal protective equipment]
      v. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/401a500/ntp_500.pdf Risk prevention in the laboratory. Devices for action and protection in emergency situations]
      vi. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/301a400/ntp_376.pdf Exposition to biological agents: Safety and good laboratory practices]
      vii. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/401a500/ntp_432.pdf Risk prevention in the laboratory. Organization and general recommendations]
      viii. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Documentacion/FichasTecnicas/NTP/Ficheros/201a300/ntp_233.pdf Biological Safety Cabinets]
      ix. [http://www.insht.es/InshtWeb/Contenidos/Normativa/GuiasTecnicas/Ficheros/agen_bio.pdf Technical guidelines for assessing and preventing risks related to biological agents exposure]
      
      
4. Project-specific questions by Dr. Millett, from United Nations
   1. Do you have other ideas on how to deal with safety or security issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?
      The implementation of a color code (red, yellow, green) could be an option for the classification according to safety or security risk of parts, devices and systems. And, of course, a thorough description of potential risks should be taken into account.
   2. What would happen if horizontal gene transfer was to occur and the antimicrobial peptides that lyse bacterial cells disrupt the natural intestinal population?
      It is not part of our system, goal or spirit, that someone drinks the bactericin-producing strains. If that would happen, out of an accident or momentary lapse of reason, there is a slight possibility that bactericin-producer strain gets into your mouth, reaches stomach, survive the extreme pH and the enzymes cocktail, gets past to the intestine and there transfers to Escherichia coli populating the gut and that some bacteria population gets killed. That would be a very improbable output of our project, but still possible. Anyway, if odds are against us, we have to bear in mind that bactericin-like proteins called defensins, are already in the human genome in a pseudogene manner, and that many vertebrates and invertebrates have similar proteins acting against bacteria.
   3. Would that have health implications? Is that something that would need to be addressed?
      In the gut, bacteria are killed on the same rate which they are dividing. Every drug that we consume is a bomb for some bacteria subpopulation. Antibiotics got their name because of that effect. We do not think that there would be health implication in this case. Gut bacteria ecology would drift but not as much as getting an aspirin.
   4. Would the benefits of the research outweigh any potential risks?
      We believe the potential benefits outweigh the risks by a wide margin. Our project could be the first step in the eradication of the water crisis in most underdeveloped countries. Of course there's a list of risks and hindrances to the project which we have described and evaluated in this report.. At present, we do not find risks that represent a major problem for the design, research and construction of this project. Thus the benefit of having a low-cost, do-it-yourself disinfector is not outweighed by any issue.
   5. How has the team complied with the various EU directives that cover their work (that are listed on the safety pages of other European teams)?
      We are following the national biosafety regulations from our country, which are based in the EU directives regarding biosafety in laboratory.