Team:Berkeley/Safety

The genetic materials used in our project pose no safety or health concerns to members in the lab. There are certain chemicals and solvents we use in lab that are known to be toxic, but all are treated with proper caution and care. If released by accident, our parts and materials would do no negative damage to the general public. No substances could be used maliciously because the bacteria we use is in no way capable of causing wide-spread harm or harm to individuals. They are all benign by nature and pose no realistic danger to anyone.

The environment is also in no danger from such a hypothetical release for reasons stated previously. Also, most of the source DNAs used in our project are either from the E. coli MG1655 genome, are commonly used materials in E. coli, or are known genes from RG1 organisms. Though in common use, one of our coding sequences is from RG2 organism: Tox R and the Pctx promoter are from a virulence island from Vibrio cholerae.1 However, they only encode a transcription factor and a promoter, respectively. Only the N-terminal half of the open reading frame sequence of ToxR was taken from the source sequence, and the Pctx promoter does not include any open reading frames or known coding RNAs. As there is no function to these features except their ability to act as a transcriptional activator and promoter pair, we believe these materials to be RG1. Based on current knowledge of molecular function of these source DNAs there are no specific anticipated risks associated with any combination of these materials beyond the fact that they are derived from RG1 E. coli. The largest single volume used in these studies will be 2 liters, though most experiments involve between 1ul and 40mL of liquid medium.

Although none of our parts require extensive precaution, we have been sure to take proper care when working with E. Coli. However, none of our parts require special safety documentation beyond general precaution when dealing with bacteria and recombinant DNA.

UC Berkeley has its own biosafety rules that are regulated by the Environmental & Health Safety (EH&S) office as well as the Committee on Laboratory and Environmental Biosafety (CLEB). Their list of rules are outlined at the link below:
http://ehs.berkeley.edu/healthsafety/biosafety/researchguidelines.pdf

We have also discussed our project with the Committee on Laboratory and Environmental Biosafety, which presides over biosafety in our laboratory. We have filled out their required safety document called the Biological Use Authorization (BUA), which asked us to outline our project and discuss any possible safety concerns our project may present. The document’s questions can be read here:
http://ehs.berkeley.edu/healthsafety/biosafety/bua.html#cleb

In the US, the CDC works with the National Institutes of Health to publish national biosafety guidelines.

Each member of our lab received biosafety training before the project began. This included general laboratory safety, radioactive material user training, biosafety, laser safety and hazardous and chemical spill training. These training sessions are put on by EH&S, and they offer them regularly in the form of a two hour lecture, as well as an online presentation and quiz. Furthermore, each member of the iGEM team was trained by our iGEM Graduate Student instructor on proper lab techniques and safety procedures.

We believe that integrating the safety concerns into new software tools as well as integrating biosafety regulations into general design workflow would improve adherence to biosafety regulations.