Team:British Columbia/Safety

1. Would any of your parts or project ideas raise safety issues?

A. Risks to the safety and health of team members or others in the lab?

No. Upon assessment, our engineered parts present a very low risk to the safety of the researcher, public and the environment. Every team member has completed the introductory biosafety courses.

The main chassis we are working with, S. cerevisiae yeast 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.

The G. clavigera bluestain fungus 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 terpenes we will be working with (alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, 3-carene, limonene) are toxic at high concentrations if ingested and may also irritate the eyes, skin and airway. However, from previous studies, we expect terpene production of at most a couple hundred mg/L. Working with at most 50mL at a time, this puts potential exposure levels well below 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 terpenes will be disposed of according to chemical waste disposal procedures as to not pollute the environment.

B. Risks to the safety and health of the general public if released by design or accident?

As explained in part (a), none of the organisms, parts or created compounds are pathogenic, infectious or toxic at the safety levels we are working at. The team is also following proper disposal procedures.

Exposure to our yeast chassis and terpenes would be as hazardous as exposure to baker's yeast, unfiltered beer or an air freshener. The bluestain fungus is also not pathogenic to humans, although it is a reasonable assumption that deliberate ingestion or inhalation of a considerably large amount of this fungus like any other mold would result in detrimental effects to one's health.

C. Risks to environmental quality if released by design or accident?

The only component of our project that may pose an environmental risk is the bluestain fungus, which forms a symbiotic relationship with the mountain pine beetle to facilitate its spread in the pine forests. However, it 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.

In order to cause deliberate harm to the environment, someone would have to breed mountain pine beetles with the bluestain fungus and travel out into the pine forests and release these beetles onto aged pine trees, which would eventually lead to an infestation over a few years. However, this would not be the start of something new e.g. introducing a competitive invasive species, because there is already a mountain pine beetle-bluestain fungus epidemic in North American pine forests.

D. Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups or states?

At the moment, it doesn't seem very feasible to maliciously misuse our yeast, terpenes or bluestain fungus since they don't pose a serious or immediate health or environmental threat.

2. 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 (refer to answer for question 1). Our biobrick parts consist of yeast promoters, genes encoding monoterpene synthases and S. cerevisiae mevalonate pathway genes. These components are easily found in the laboratory and in nature.

3. 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?

A and B. Does your institution have its own biosafety rules? Does your institution have an Institutional Biosafety Committee? Have you discussed your project with them?

UBC's [http://www.ors.ubc.ca/ors/biosafety biosafety committee] has the institutional biosafety rules on their [http://www.ors.ubc.ca/contents/biohazard-policies biohazard policies site]. 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.

C. Did you receive any biosafety and/or lab training before beginning your project?

Each student on our team has gone through basic biosafety courses put on by the Risk Management Services. The [http://riskmanagement.ubc.ca/courses/laboratory-chemical-safety chemical safety training] covered: chemical hazards, WHMIS, safe handling, storage, hazard recognition and control, waste management and emergency response. In the practical session, our students performed a spill clean-up, learn decontamination procedures and will practice chemical segregation for safe storage. The [http://riskmanagement.ubc.ca/courses/intro-lab-safety basic laboratory safety] served to increase our knowledge about the Workplace Hazardous Material Information System (WHMIS), biohazards, hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials.

Our faculty instructor, Dr. Joanne Fox went through a 3-day basic laboratory training course with the team in early June before they started working in the lab. The team also established basic safety rules to follow with the members of our host lab.

Furthermore, the 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.

D. Does your country have national biosafety regulations or guidelines?

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].

4. 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

5. Additional Comments

Since our project's vision is to release synthetic yeast into the environment to address the mountain pine beetle outbreak, we spoke to many experts in the field and collated their insights into the release of synthetic organisms. We believe that this raises many important safety points that future researchers and iGEM teams should consider if they plan to release synthetic organisms into the environment.

The interview transcripts and take-home messages can be found here.