iGEM Safety

Safety forms were approved on September 29, 2013 by the iGEM Safety Committee.

Chassis Organism

New and/or Modified Coding Regions

Risks

The two chassis strains (E.coli, C. violaceum) are potential pathogenes for humans. For E. coli, the risks are minimal, but good laboratory practises were applied to avoid possible contaminations. For C. violaceum, all experiments involving this strain will be performed in a P2 facility and under the supervision of a member of the permanent staff who is the manager of the P2 facility.
There is no environmental risks.
C. violaceum is used only for parts characterisation and is not part of the original project. For the project itself, only the E.coli K12 is used and the potential risks of converting the project into a commercial product are already assessed for industrial purposes.
In the potential case where some parts should be used for other purposes than research, precautions shoud be taken to assess the safety of these microorganisms. No parts will be introduced into C. violaceum, avoiding possible antibiotic resistance of the strain.
All students receive a 2 hours safety course provided by the biosafety commitee executive. All of them were required to take a test at the end, and all of them passed.
There is an institutional biosafety commitee. The project was approved by several teachers of the institute.
The Biosafety level of our lab is 2. The institute has a P2 room fully equiped for manipulating level 2 risk group organisms.
The chassis organism risk group is 1. However, we also use a level 2 test chassis that is only manipulated in the P2 facility.