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Team:British Columbia/Safety
From 2011.igem.org
Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of: researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety?
Upon assessment, our engineered parts present a very low risk to the safety of the researcher, public and the environment.
Team: Every team member has completed the introductory laboratory safety course. We have compiled a list of our certificates in a binder in the lab.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Yeast: S. cerevisiae is one of the well-characterized agents not known to consistently cause disease in healthy adult humans, and of minimal potential hazard to laboratory personnel and the environment.
Bluestain Fungus: Researcher and public safety: G. clavigera has not been shown to cause disease in humans and there are no special biosafety protocols researchers have to follow, other than basic treatment of equipment and materials coming into contact with the organism (autoclaving, etc.). The bluestain fungus requires a vector, the mountain pine beetle, to allow it to colonize new trees, so even if spores were carried out of the lab by a researcher the chances of them infecting the local environment is extremely low. Even other species of beetles found in infected trees have not been found to carry the fungus, so it is very specific to the mountain pine beetle.
Terpenes: The terpenes we will be working with (alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, 3-carene, limonene) are toxic if ingested and an irritant to the eyes, skin and airway. However, from previous studies, we should expect terpene production of at most a couple hundred mg/L. Working with at most ~5mL at a time, this puts potential exposure levels well below ingested toxicity levels, which are on the order of several grams per kg body mass (if ingested). Safety precautions, including wearing gloves and safety glasses, will be taken to ensure researcher safety and prevent exposure. All work involving presence of terpenes will be disposed of according to chemical waste disposal procedures, as to not pollute the environment.
Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?
No, we do not have any safety issues with the Biobrick parts made this year. Our biobrick parts consist of genes encoding terpene synthases and S. cerevisiae mevalonate pathway genes.
Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution? If yes, what does your local biosafety group think about your project? If no, which specific biosafety rules or guidelines do you have to consider in your country?
Yes, there is a local biosafety group at UBC called the [http://www.ors.ubc.ca/ors/biosafety Biosafety Committee]. They are part of the Risk Management Services at UBC which educates and ensures UBC staff follows safe laboratory procedures at all times. Biosafety committee governs whether or not research can be conducted at UBC. They are composed of UBC faculty, staff, a biosafety advisor and the manager of occupational safety. In order for research to be done, the principle investigator must submit an application that outlines: objectives, methods, procedures, biosafety, what work will be done and where, what materials will be used, and waste management procedures.
After this is submitted, the UBC Biosafety Committee will either reject or approve the principle investigator to do his/her work. They are granted Biohazard Approval Certification for 4 years but they must renew their certification annually.
We specifically spoke with the safety adviser at UBC. We have the appropriate biosafety approval to do the wet lab portion of our iGEM project in the Michael Smith Laboratories at UBC. We are working in a lab that already has its principle investigator approved to do similar research and we are not testing new procedures which have not been approved yet. Each student on our team has gone through [http://riskmanagement.ubc.ca/courses/laboratory-chemical-safety chemical safety training] and [http://riskmanagement.ubc.ca/courses/intro-lab-safety basic laboratory safety] put on by the Risk Management Services. Furthermore, Michael Smith Laboratories has it's own local biosafety committee which is composed of members from each lab. They coordinate with each other to ensure each group knows the safety protocols specific to their labs and deal with lab specific matters when incidents arise.
The Canadian government has 2 bodies which overlook each biosafety committee at Canadian universities. The first is the [http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/index-eng.php Public Health Agency of Canada]. They published the [http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/lbg-ldmbl-04/ “Laboratory Biosafety Guidelines”] – a booklet that outlines all the rules which biological labs must follow. The second group is the [http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/toce.shtml Canadian Food Inspection Agency] which mostly deals with plants and animals. They have established a [http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/sci/bio/bioe.shtml containment standard] for labs dealing with plant pests.
Additionally, should we ever choose to release a product into the wild, to limit (or stop) the spread of the pine beetle, we would have to go through numerous other agencies in Canada – most notably [http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=en Environment Canada].
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?
We encourage the use of organisms that are well adapted to laboratory settings and are not competitive outside lab environment. If synthetic organisms are to be released into the environment, they should:
(1) Contain a tracking system to detect their presence e.g. a non-coding DNA code akin to a fingerprint
(2) Contain a suicide system to enable effective elimination of the organism when so desired
