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BIOSAFETY
Q: Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety? A: Quite the contrary. As a matter of fact the basic idea of the project is to control the production of a Quorum Sensing molecule (3OC6HSL). This cell-to-cell communication mechanism often regulates in nature the patogenicity of a bacterial strain and the contribution to the basic knowledge provided by this study might eventually help further studies and investigations concerning the proliferation of potentially unsafe organisms. Q: Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution? A: There is a biosafety board in our lab and also in our University: Università degli Studi di Pavia biosafety department. Q: What does your local biosafety group think about your project? A: Since standard safety procedures were regarded as appropriated for our work, the biosafety board approved our project without any particular restrictions. The board itself is in charge of training students in using devices and instruments following all safety prescriptions. In particular, we have handled ethidium bromide, hydrochloric acid 33% and IPTG following all safety prescriptions. Q: Do any of the new BioBrick parts that you made this year raise any safety issues? A: All the BioBrick parts we have designed and built are intrisically safe. Therefore no safety issues can be raised due to the fact that toxins or pathogenetic factors are not contained in or produced by plasmids/bacterial strains that have been used.
