Team:Edinburgh/Safety

Safety (general)

• Would the materials used in your project and/or your final product pose:
  • Risks to the safety and health of team members or others in the lab?
  • Risks to the safety and health of the general public if released by design or accident?
  • Risks to environmental quality if released by design or accident?
  • Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups or states?

This year's project involves catalysing reactions by using enzymes displayed on bacteriophage and on the bacterial cell surface via Ice Nucleation Protein. A simple test system will involve amylase or GFP; a more complex system would incorporate multiple types of cellulase. None of these things are harmful to humans. There is no pathogenicity, infectivity, or toxicity.

While the full form of Ice Nucleation Protein is apparently used by Pseudomonas syringae to help it attack plants, our version lacks the extensive central domains which actually cause ice nucleation; therefore as it stands it has no pathogenicity.

Our primary concern therefore should be that no harm comes to the environment due to escape of recombinant DNA into the metagenome.

The phage system is such that BioBrick DNA will not be packaged into the phage, so transfer of DNA to other organisms by this route should be impossible. Any escaping phage will contain only normal M13 DNA, and code for normal M13 proteins.

A more likely route of genetic escape is via our lab strain of E. coli, JM109, getting into the wild. JM109 is a "disabled" strain, which has very poor survival in the wild; however the possibility of horizontal transfer of DNA to other strains, or even species, should not be ruled out.

Such DNA could become established in the metagenome if it confers a fitness advantage to some host. However, the cell display of enzymes such as cellulases has already been accomplished by evolution, a fact which greatly decreases the likelihood of our own constructs conferring a fitness advantage.

We do not see significant potential for weaponisation of our systems. Specifically, the destruction of living plant matter is essentially impossible because plants have already evolved defenses against the thousands of cellulose degrading organisms which exist; industrial use of cellulases currently depends on extensive pretreatment to remove lignin, a substance extremely difficult to degrade by biological means.

Safety (BioBricks)

• Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes,
  • did you document these issues in the Registry?
  • how did you manage to handle the safety issue?
  • How could other teams learn from your experience?

The BioBricks we will create are not expected to raise any issues escept for the ones discussed above.

Oversight

• 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?
  • If no, which specific biosafety rules or guidelines do you have to consider in your country?

Yes there is, and indeed their permission will have to be obtained before we can carry out phage work in our category 1 laboratory. A risk assessment must be submitted to them.

Ideas

• 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?

Not yet...