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The beast and its Achilles heel:
A novel target to fight multi-resistant pathogenic bacteria
Basic Safety Questions
1. Please describe the chassis organism(s) you will be using for this project. lf you will be using more than one chassis organism, provide information on each of them:
2. Highest Risk Group Listed:
Risk group 1
3. List and describe all new or modified coding regions you will be using in your project. (If you use parts from the 2013 iGEM Distribution without modifying them, you do not need to list those parts.)
4. Do the biological materials used in your lab work pose any of the following risks? Please describe.
a. Risks to the safety and health of team members or others working in the lab?
The organism we used in the lab E.coli (K12) DH5 alpha, could be pathogenicto human beings. lt may cause irritation to skin, eyes, and respiratorytract and affect kidneys.
b. Risks to the safety and health of the general public, if released by design or by accident?
The E.coli strain we used do have pathogenicity to human. But the relatively low pathogenicity, short life and vulnerability to environment factors ofthe used strain have limited the risk to general public.
c. Risks to the environment, if released by design or by accident?
The E.coli strains we used during the project are transformed with plasmids containing antibiotic markers The release of those transformed strains may cause problems like the leakage of resistance genes to wild bacterial flora.
d. Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups, or countries?
The strains we used during our project do not contain hazardous genetic compartments. The risk through malicious misuse is quite low
5. If your project moved from a small-scale lab study to become widely used as a commercial/industrial product, what new risks might arise? (Consider the different categories of risks that are listed in parts a-d of the previous question.) Also, what risks might arise if the knowledge you generate or the methods you develop became widely available? (Note: This is meant to be a somewhat open-ended discussion question.)
The system we are trying to build is mainly meant for drug screening in pharmaceutical industry. The scale of production will always be limited.
6. Does your project include any design features to address safety risks? (For example: kill switches, auxotrophic chassis, etc.) Note that including such features is not mandatory to participate in iGEM, but many groups choose to include them.
No. But as the most used model organism in molecular biology, the risk of E.coli is relatively low.
7. What safety training have you received (or plan to receive in the future)? Provide a brief description, and a link to your institution’s safety training requirements, if available.
8. Under what biosafety provisions will / do you work?
Faculty Advisor Name:
