Team:Toronto/Safety

Tell us more about your project. Give us background. Use this is the abstract of your project. Be descriptive but concise (1-2 paragraphs)

Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues?

Safety was a large concern when vetting possible ideas for the iGEM 2011 competition at the University of Toronto. Due to the lack of accessible facilities for higher bio-safety level work. All our experiments are confined to Bio-safety level 1 labs.

Our project is to engineer an E.coli bacterium to express proteins which can help it form magnetic particles known as magnetite from Ferrous ions in solution. The proteins of interest are derived from the bacterium Magnetosprillium magneticum which is non-pathogenic and found in all bodies of water. Since Magnetosprillium magneticum is anaerobic and difficult to culture in the lab we have only worked with genomic DNA from ATCC.

In the worst case scenario if our engineered bacterium were to escape the confines of the laboratory the environmental effects would be minimal. We are using non-pathogenic strains of E.coli, therefore the public would not become infected if our bacterium were to escape. THe bacterium would also not be able to create magnetite nanoparticles, as it would have to be in an iron rich media to do so.

Although safety issues involving Biosafety for infection are reasonably low, the materials produced themselves have been noted to pose possible harm. Iron Oxides are relatively inert, and in bulk, can be disposed of with ease. For this project however, nanoparticles are being produced, which fall into their own category of handling, storage, and disposal. All of the nanoparticles that have currently been produced in the lab are stored in airtight containers, and never handled unless being prepared for analysis, in which it is suspended in an appropriate solvent to avoid inhalation.

Do the new BioBrick parts that you made this year raise safety issues?

Our planned bio-bricks consists of a Vector to enable the His-Tagging of standard biobrick parts, a magnetite binding fusion protein and a number of protein coding genes found in Magnetosprillium magneticum which is an ubiquitous organism found in all bodies of water. These proteins and genes should not confer any added fitness or antibiotic resistance to bacterium found in the environment.

Is there a local Biosafety group at your institution?

The biosafety division of the Office of the Environmental Health and Safety is responsible for biosafety at the University of Toronto. We spoke with a senior biosafety officer, who was enthusiastic about the applications of the project. He explained that the main hazards of the project were proper handling and disposal of iron oxide nanoparticles, and he also directed us to a research group in the department of civil engineering that is undertaking a similar project and needs to dispose of similar materials. From these leads, we have learned the appropriate measures to facilitate safe lab protocols, avoiding accidental harm.