Team:Ciencias-UNAM/Achievements

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Achievements

Do the biological materials used in your lab work pose any of the following risks?

No the lab is a regular educational and basic investigation laboratory.

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

No, as all the strains are non-pathogenic if there was a release of them it would not cause any harm. Also the sequences used for the design are from other non-pathogenic strains and the product of them are not harmful separately or the construction itself.

Risks to the environment, if released by design or by accident?

The possible risk for the environment would be against pathogenic strains due our design. Nevertheless, considering the probabilities for our design to be expressed outside laboratory conditions, we do not think there would be any risk to the environment.

Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups, or countries?

The device itself does not contain any harmful DNA sequence, and as our strains are non-pathogenic ones could not be used for malicious misuse.

If your project moved from a small-scale lab study to become widely used as a commercial/industrial product, what new risks might arise?

As our device is meant against pathogenic strains if it would become an industrial Project. We should first analyze the possible risks for being used in humans

What safety training have you received (or plan to receive in the future)? and under what biosafety provisions will / do you work?

Our formation about safety comes from working in laboratories with a BioSafety level number 1, if we may work in the future in a laboratory with a different BioSafety level then we should get trained. The UNAM School of Science follows the biosafety regulations from the UNAM and in particular the recommendations made by the Environmental Management Unit. A more detailed protocol can be found at (www.biomedicas.unam.mx/_administracion/_unidades_apoyo_inst/ manual_bioseguridad.pdf). Mexican regulations about biosafety are summarized at http://amexbio.org/links.html According to WHO Biosafety manual our lab and our chassis is rated as Biosafety level 1.

The part is the human cathelicidin LL-37. The part is the BBa_K1230001 ( http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1230001). The human peptide LL-37 is a cationic antimicrobial peptide with activity against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. It has been shown to protect against Helicobacter pylori infection and its related gastritis, besides of inhibiting the growth of other pathogenic bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract such as Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli. We are using it because we want our synthetic bacteria to express the LL-37 antimicrobial peptide in presence of pathogenic bacteria that express quorum sensing molecule AI-2.

There is no potential safety/health risk for the team members, institution staff or general public by using the part that codes for de LL-37 antimicrobial peptide because is a human gene that is express only when the inmmune system interacts with a pathogenic microbe like Helicobacter pylori.