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Team:Virginia/Safety
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| - | + | Our project is planned from the ground up to prioritize safety. The only hazardous reagent we handle is ethidium bromide as a fluorescent tag, both our host microorganism ''S. cerevisea'' and our procedural intermediate ''E. coli'' are harmless, the genetic circuit assembled in our recombinant DNA is manifestly non-virulent, our project phase structure minimizes risk to researchers, and many other facets of project planning and execution ensure the highest possible safety standards. We work in a Biosafety Level 2 lab in compliance with departmental biosafety guidelines as well as the NIH biosafety guidelines for projects involving recombinant DNA. We are also in close consultation with experienced research advisers and lab managers. | |
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| + | Although the long-term application of our device is medical, testing that uses mammalian/human subjects is far beyond the scope of our project. Nevertheless, in part to eliminate any risk of unwanted effects of bioactive products of gene expression (especially any of the target growth factors), we split the project up into multiple phases, first testing the circuit with two well-characterized and benign fluorescent proteins GFP and RFP in place of the mammalian growth factors, and only proceeding to expression of the growth factors once we finish characterizing the bidirectional promoter. | ||
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| + | Our device, when working properly, would not represent a virulent hazard to people or the environment, but overall system risk is highly dependent on the specifics of output-tuning, because although our engineered organism is non-infectious, one of the growth-factors that it releases to accelerate angiogenesis in wound-healing (VEGF) is also known to contribute to certain diseases (including the growth of tumors) if produced in excessive quantities. We attempt to mitigate risk in this regard by implementing a feedback control that can be precisely tuned to acceptable levels of output. Risk of unintentionally aiding oncogenesis is further mitigated by our selection of the host organism itself because our chosen strain of ''S. cerevisiea'' has a doubling time of approximately 2 hours, in stark contrast with standard ''E. coli'' doubling times of roughly 20 minutes. This choice yields a much more manageable rate of proliferation in the case of some unforeseen mishap or over-expression. | ||
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| + | Another miscellaneous, low-probability concerns addressed by our project design is the off-chance that our genetic material is lost or intercepted in transit. By opting to use an assembly method in which the genetic material we need to have synthesized off-site is fragmented into 60mers, none of which contains standalone-functional genetic material, only operational when sequentially combined in the presence of very specific ligases at certain temperatures, our project eliminates the risk of spontaneous uncontrolled uptake in the event of an accident during transit in which our synthesized sequences were lost. | ||
Revision as of 23:25, 14 July 2011
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Our project is planned from the ground up to prioritize safety. The only hazardous reagent we handle is ethidium bromide as a fluorescent tag, both our host microorganism S. cerevisea and our procedural intermediate E. coli are harmless, the genetic circuit assembled in our recombinant DNA is manifestly non-virulent, our project phase structure minimizes risk to researchers, and many other facets of project planning and execution ensure the highest possible safety standards. We work in a Biosafety Level 2 lab in compliance with departmental biosafety guidelines as well as the NIH biosafety guidelines for projects involving recombinant DNA. We are also in close consultation with experienced research advisers and lab managers.
Although the long-term application of our device is medical, testing that uses mammalian/human subjects is far beyond the scope of our project. Nevertheless, in part to eliminate any risk of unwanted effects of bioactive products of gene expression (especially any of the target growth factors), we split the project up into multiple phases, first testing the circuit with two well-characterized and benign fluorescent proteins GFP and RFP in place of the mammalian growth factors, and only proceeding to expression of the growth factors once we finish characterizing the bidirectional promoter.
Our device, when working properly, would not represent a virulent hazard to people or the environment, but overall system risk is highly dependent on the specifics of output-tuning, because although our engineered organism is non-infectious, one of the growth-factors that it releases to accelerate angiogenesis in wound-healing (VEGF) is also known to contribute to certain diseases (including the growth of tumors) if produced in excessive quantities. We attempt to mitigate risk in this regard by implementing a feedback control that can be precisely tuned to acceptable levels of output. Risk of unintentionally aiding oncogenesis is further mitigated by our selection of the host organism itself because our chosen strain of S. cerevisiea has a doubling time of approximately 2 hours, in stark contrast with standard E. coli doubling times of roughly 20 minutes. This choice yields a much more manageable rate of proliferation in the case of some unforeseen mishap or over-expression.
Another miscellaneous, low-probability concerns addressed by our project design is the off-chance that our genetic material is lost or intercepted in transit. By opting to use an assembly method in which the genetic material we need to have synthesized off-site is fragmented into 60mers, none of which contains standalone-functional genetic material, only operational when sequentially combined in the presence of very specific ligases at certain temperatures, our project eliminates the risk of spontaneous uncontrolled uptake in the event of an accident during transit in which our synthesized sequences were lost.
