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Team:Bilkent UNAM Turkey/safety
From 2011.igem.org
Contents |
SAFETY AND SECURITY QUESTIONS
1. Would the materials used in your project and/or your final product pose:
a. Risks to the safety and health of team members or others in the lab?
Using hazardous materials always has risk to cause trouble for team and lab members. We always
use hoods and wearing lab coat, gloves, goggles are essential for an experiment.
We are working on two species one of them is Chlamydomonas reinhardtii which has no dangerous
effect on human health. Other one is Bacillus subtilis which also is not human pathogen but it
could cause food poisoning.
b. Risks to the safety and health of the general public if released by design or accident?
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a strain of algae and it could cause algal bloom that means it
overgrown in a water ecosystem and become poisonous for other species which share same places.
According to a Toxic Substances Control Act report from the Environmental Protection Agency,
Bacillus subtilis “is considered a benign organism as it does not possess traits that cause
disease. It is not considered pathogenic or toxigenic to humans, animals, or plants. The potential
risk associated with the use of this bacterium in fermentation facilities is low.” Its degree of
toxicity is III and IV the lowest toxicity effect on other species.
c. Risks to environmental quality if released by design or accident?
We haven’t checked modified organism is more competitive than natural strains. However; Bacillus
subtilis is well-known and commonly used model organism like Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
d. Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups or states?
Our modified Chlamydomonas reinhardtii just degrade TNT and it could not use for terrorism
activity. Those two modified organism could not have ability to damage human health. Our facility
always has an active security system and it requires an identity card for enterance.
2.Please explain your responses (whether yes or no) to these questions.
Specifically, are any parts or devices in your project associated with (or known to cause):
- pathogenicity, infectivity, or toxicity?
No
- threats to environmental quality?
No
- security concerns?
No
If your response to any of the questions above is yes:
a. Explain how you addressed these issues in project design and while conducting laboratory work.
Algal species, including Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, are capable of causing wide-scale bloom events known colloquially as red tides, with severe negative consequences to freshwater and marine environs. Therefore, the algal strains used in our project are an environmental risk. Consequently, they are treated as biological
hazardous waste. All biological waste is disposed of according to standards of the National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM). Briefly, cells were killed via 5% bleach and disposed to a waste storage allocated for biological contaminants.
b. Describe and document safety, security, health and/or environmental issues as you submit your
parts to the Registry.
Our parts have not any safety, security and health issues. However, adding nfsI gene into algae
could make it more competitive than normal strains. It requires checking before releasing to
nature.
3. Under what biosafety provisions will / do you operate?
a. Does your institution have its own biosafety rules and if so what are they? Provide a link to
them online if possible.
Our institution have its own biosafety rules and it takes 19 page so we added a link below which
leads to institution’s safety committee page and it contains two link; one of them orientation
of our lab and other one is chemical disposal form.
http://unam.bilkent.edu.tr/UNAM%20Laboratory%20Safety.html
b. 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.
We have a Laboratory Safety Committee; however, we did not discuss about our project because our
experiment contains standard cloning procedure, which has always done in the lab.
c. Will / did you receive any biosafety and/or lab training before beginning your project? If
so, describe this training.
Our institution have an exam about biosafety, we passed it. It consists of orientation which
mentioned above.
d. Does your country have national biosafety regulations or guidelines? If so, provide a link to
them online if possible.
http://www.unep.org/biosafety/files/TRNBFrep.pdf
