Team:LMU-Munich/Safety

From 2011.igem.org

Revision as of 14:24, 28 August 2011

Safety

1. Would any of your project ideas and/or final products raise safety issues in terms of:

• researcher safety,
• public safety,
• environmental safety
• malicious misuse?

Our project doesn't raise any safety issues other than usual lab safety issues– whether for the researcher, nor for the publicity and environment.

To assure this in first place, every participant took part in a general safety meeting in order to join the iGEM-Team. This meeting dealt with the common safety rules concerning optimal laboratory conditions, working with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the general behavior in the lab. In order to protect ourselves, we mostly worked with non-hazardous chemicals and organisms like non-pathogenic E. coli strains such as DH5 alpha or BL21. Besides, we wear a lab coat and single-use gloves. When working with e.g. liquid N₂, we wear goggles as well. When operating with dangerous substances (as e. g. ethidiumbromide), we additionally wear nitrile gloves. Furthermore dangerous substances are stored and handled in desigenated rooms in order to assure the safety of the researchers.

For the protection of the public and the environment against hazardous substances, our garbage as well as our liquid waste is sterilized by autoclavation. Before leaving the laboratory, every researcher cleans and disinfects his/her hands. Moreover, we leave the windows closed and do not throw jeopardy stuff into the sink.

Our biobricks contain inducible promotors, regulators and reporter genes. None of them is able to cause illnesses or threaten humans in any other way. For one promotor and one gene we need genomic DNA from Ralstonia metallidurans(and other names...)and Neisseria meningititis. We will only work with the DNA of these organsims which is not infectious.

2. 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?

We don't expect any of our planned BioBricks to raise any special safety issues.

3. 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?

At the faculty of biology we have biosafety groups for each area of research. Since we work in the field of microbiology and synthetic biology PD Dr. Ralf Heermann and Prof. Dr. Heinrich Jung are the responsible commissioners for our team.

Germany has signed and ratified the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol. This protocol ensures safe handling, use and transfer of genetically modified organisms. Furthermore, we have our own laws and guidelines for biosafety here. For example, all laboratories which are handling GMOs have a designated biosafety level, which is stated in a genetic engineering decree (Gentechnik Sicherheitsverordnung).

4. 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?

To improve the safety while working with (hazardous) biobricks a new kind of biobrick backbone should be established. Every potentially pathogenic or hazardous biobrick should be cloned in a special backbone containing the sequences of the present backbones (ORI, resistance cassette,restriction sites ...) AND an inducible killing gene cassette. This killing cassette (e.g. ccdB in E. coli with an exchanged promotor or bak for eukaryotic cells) is induced by a normaly absent reagent that could easily be added in case of contamination. Adding this reagent would result in an expression of the killing gene, which leads to the death of the (pathogenic) cells containing the biobrick plasmid.