Safety

Use this page to answer the questions on the safety page.

iGEM Safety Questions

1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in term of:

-researcher safety

We are using the bacteria Burkholderia xenovorans, Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes KF707, Rhodococcus jostii RHA1 and Escherichia coli DH5 a to build the biobrick parts, and especially Escherichia coli DH5 a as the host of our constructs. These strains are not pathogenic so they belong to the risk group 1 according to the WHO laboratory biosafety manual. These organisms have been manipulated with all the required precautions without any risk or danger for our researchers leading the experiments. Nevertheless, for our project a chemical pollutant the PCB (Polychlorinated Biphenyl) has been employed so as to test the efficiency of our constructs. This hydrophobic molecule can penetrate skin and latex, it is able to induct cardiovascular disease and maybe cancer, that is why we manipulated it with the material and methods introduced by the IOMC (Inter-Organization Program for the Sound Management of Chemicals) letting us manipulate it safely.

http://www.chem.unep.ch/pops/pdf/pcbtranscap.pdf

-public safety

During the course of an experiment, we made sure members of the general public did not have access to the lab by keeping the door locked. The lack of pathogenic power of these strains avoided all danger of illness diffusion by an unlikely exposition. Concerning PCBs, their manipulation was done in confined conditions where anybody unexpected could be in contact with this pollutant.

-environmental safety

Our project has been made to be applied in the case of a confined environment where microorganisms won’t vanish within the air steering clear any DNA transfer with another form of life. If we expect the worst these genes would confer the ability of catalyze the degradation or detect PCBs what do not represent a real danger for environment if we do not care about the probability of mutations modifying their function or quite simply the ethical limits of GMOs released in nature.

2.Do any of the BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise safety issues?

Not really, this year the biobricks will concern the detection of PCBs and the coordination of the biodegradation metabolism of those in E.Coli, the parts are not dangerous as they are.

3.Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

There is, in every department of the Université Paris-Sud, a comity in charge of hygiene and security. Consequently, the Institute of Genetics and Microbiology, where we performed our experiments, has a bureau in charge of hygiene and security whose GMO section is directed by one of our instructors: Jean-Luc Pernodet. His presence in the team helped us think of the dangers linked to disseminating GMOs into the environment, as well as ways to resolve these problems. We also learned about the specific safety rules of the laboratory where we carried our experiments with the person in charge of this laboratory (gas usage, handling of BEt (ethidium bromide), processing of chemical and biological waste...). We also payed attention to the security memorandum and signed the hygiene and security charter of the Institute of Genetics and Microbiology: Security memorandum Hygiene and security charter All experiments were carried out according to French Safety Regulations.

4. Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How parts devices and systems could be made even safer through biosafety engineering

The advocation by the iGEM competition of the restriction enzymes and particularly the 3A assembly, even if we are fully aware of the fact that it’s a way to reach compatibility, could be, in terms of biosafety, a mean to increase the probability of DNA transfer between organisms because of the excessive use of restriction sites, in the prefix and the suffix, recognized by enzymes that can be easily found, in high levels, in most of organisms.

Some ways using methods like Gibson Assembly should be more frequently employed to make the constructs, even if the biobrick standard would be harder to approach.

However the risk of DNA transformation by homologous sequences remains in spite of the reduction of biohazard. Obviously it’s only a hypothesis whose hasn’t been checke