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From 2011.igem.org

The work with genetically engineered organsims might rise questions about safety issues. Here we answer them.

Safety

• 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?

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 eutrophus and Neisseria meningitidis. We will only work with the DNA of these organsims which is not infectious.

Our project is not thought to be used outside the lab. The waterprobes are transported to the lab and tested so there is no risk of contaminating the environment with GMOs.

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• 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.

• • Describe and document safety, security, health and/or environmental issues as you submit your parts to the Registry.

We don't expect any of our planned BioBricks to raise any special safety issues since none of them is pathogenic.

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• Under what biosafety provisions will / do you operate?

  • Does your institution have its own biosafety rules and if so what are they? Provide a link to them online if possible.

• • 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.

• • Will / did you receive any biosafety and/or lab training before beginning your project? If so, describe this training.

• • Does your country have national biosafety regulations or guidelines? If so, provide a link to them online if possible.

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. Both had no concerns about the safety of our project.

To ensure that we don't contaminate the environment with our kit we thought will handle the water probes only in the lab.

Before we started to work in our lab, Prof. Dr. Mascher gave us a biosyfety training. He told us about possible dangers in the lab and how to react in a case of emergency. During the lab inspection we learned where the fire extinguishers and fire blankets are and how to use the emergency shower and the eye douche. For our own safety we should not work alone (or at least tell someone that you are here). Furthermore we were told the general rules while working with GMOs. We keep the windows closed and autoclave contaminated waste. We wear labcoats and sometimes goggles. After leaving the lab, we wash and desinfect our hands. We learned how to handle, store and dispose our material and how to document our work properly.

Germany has signed and ratified the [http://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cartagena-protocol-en.pdf 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 ([http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/gentsv/gesamt.pdf Gentechnik Sicherheitsverordnung]).

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• 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.