Team:Toronto/Safety

Tell us more about your project. Give us background. Use this is the abstract of your project. Be descriptive but concise (1-2 paragraphs)

Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues?

Safety was a large concern when vetting possible ideas for the iGEM 2011 competition at the University of Toronto. Due to the lack of accessible facilities for higher bio-safety level work, all our experiments are confined to Bio-safety level 1 labs.

Our project consists of engineering an E.coli bacterium to express proteins which aid it in facilitating the formation of magnetic nano-particles of magnetite (iron (2,3) oxide) from ions in solution. The proteins of interest are derived from the bacterium Magnetosprillium magneticum which is non-pathogenic and found in most bodies of fresh and marine water. Since Magnetosprillium magneticum is anaerobic and difficult to culture in the lab we have only worked with genomic DNA from ATCC.

If our engineered bacterium were to escape the confines of the laboratory the environmental effects would be minimal. We are using non-pathogenic strains of E.coli, preventing the hazards of public infection and contamination of drinking water reserves. The bacterium would be unable to create magnetite nanoparticles, as it would not be provided with the strictly controlled laboratory conditions necessitated for biomineralization.

Althoughthe risk of infection is low, the product nanomaterials have been noted to pose possible harm. Iron Oxides are relatively inert, and in bulk, can be disposed of with ease. For this project however, biomineralization yields iron oxide nanoparticles , which fall under their own category of handling, storage, and disposal. All of the nanoparticles that have currently been produced in the lab are stored in airtight containers, and are never handled unless being prepared for analysis, in which case they are suspended in an appropriate solvent to avoid inhalation.

Do the new BioBrick parts that you made this year raise safety issues?

Our planned bio-bricks consists of a vector used to enable the His-Tagging of standard biobrick parts, a magnetite-binding fusion protein and a number of protein coding genes found in Magnetosprillium magneticum. These proteins and genes should not confer any added fitness or antibiotic resistance to bacterium found in the environment.

Is there a local Biosafety group at your institution?

The biosafety division of the Office of the Environmental Health and Safety is responsible for biosafety at the University of Toronto. We spoke with a senior biosafety officer, who was enthusiastic about the applications of the project. He explained that the main hazards of the project were proper handling and disposal of iron oxide nanoparticles, and he also directed us to a research group in the Department of Civil Engineering that is undertaking a similar project and needs to dispose of similar materials. From these leads, we have learned the appropriate measures to facilitate safe lab protocols, avoiding accidental harm.