Team:ITB Indonesia/Safety

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?
Our team works with Escherichia coli DH5α and BL21(DE3) that prefer to Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) mentioned that wild type strain E. coli can irritate to the skin, eyes, inhalation duct, blood circulation, and kidney. Then we modify it to know the sample target that we want by insert genes code, promotor, and reporter genes. The insertion are not expected to increase pathogenicity in any way. In addition to work with E. coli, our team work with aflatoxin that potentially very high hazard and carcinogenically to human. To minimize the risk, our team and the researchers in lab always keep working safe in the lab by using gloves, laboratory coats, mask, and goggles if necessary.
Vector used in this project is standard, widely used, and resistent to some antibiotics such as pSB1C3 (Registry of Standard Biological Parts). This is not expected to pose any risk to human health, nor should such resistance determinants be passed to other bacteria.

b. Risks to the safety and health of the general public, if released by design or by accident?
Our project is not easily give negative impact to environment. This can be seen not only in the use of device but is also seen in practice in the lab, all of waste bacteria, medium, and disposable goods according to the procedure. For waste bacteria and the medium, before discarded, it must pass through stages of destruction by autoclaving to ensure all bacteria die before actually dumped into disposal.
Additionally, in our whole cell biosensors are E. coli that has been modified. To maintain the safety and health of the public, our device is equipped with membrane that doesn't provide space for E. coli to be able to exit so that the device we ensured safety for the user. Final device will use freeze dried E. coli are susceptible to moisture (hygroscopic) so that if we have a leak in the device so freeze dried E. coli contained inside will be damaged and no longer work, it would reduce the risk to the public and environment.

c. Risk to the environment, if released by design or by accident?
As detailed above we have thought carefully about how to prevent our modified strains from getting into the environment. Inserted genes are not expected to increase the ability of the organisms to survive in the external environment or to cause harm to the environment or any other organisms.

d. Risk to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups, or countries?
In addition to the hazards posed by the lab workers, as well as design in our devices, the potential danger is also determined by the abuse committed by people who are not responsible. Modified strains could be used as a biological weapon to cause new diseases and mess up a country. Actually it is most likely not going to happen on our device, because the device we use freeze dried E. coli that can only survive in the device, not resistant to humidity changes, and changes in oxygen levels. So if someone wants to steal malicious modified strains in our device can be ascertained that the modified strains defunct when it will be reused by the thieves.

If your project moved from a small-scale lab study to become widely used as a commercial/industrial product, what new risk might arise? (Consider the different categories of risks that are listed in parts a-d of the previous question.) also, what risk 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.)
Our primary motive to design our project is public beneficence, to improve global public health by monitoring the safety of food. We have alo foresee the public and environment implication above. Actually, to make our device can be used commercially by the industry is a long way because it must pass through stages of validation with a series of tests, such as allergicity test, toxicity test, immunity test, and other test support. Although it has been ascertained that the modified strains in our device will not work when there is a change of oxygen and humidity levels it still testing validation should be implemented for the safety, health, and safety of the user and the environment.

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.
Yes, it does. We would engineer our strains to be kill switches. It is associated with the use of our device are just disposable. To ensure the safety and health of users or the environment then we apply the principle of kill switches so that after the detection of aflatoxin were detected and finish, modified strains can die in the time you've set, and can be safely disposed to disposal.

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.
Specific safety training is not done by our campus, but the material on health and safety has become compulsory each semester credit  in several courses at ITB. The name of the course varies for each program of study, such as the Health and Safety Work in Bioindustrial, Biosafety, Security Process Factory, etc.. The next article we'll have a meeting and discussion with a number of faculty staff who are experts in this field to discuss a peace biosafety our device. Besides writing scholarly articles about health and safety Genetically Modified microorganisms will also team did.

Under what biosafety provisions will/do you work?
a. Please provide a link to your institution biosafety guidelines
-

b. Does your institution have an Institutional Biosafety Committee, or an equivalent group? If yes, have you discussed your project with them? Describe any concerns they raised with your project, and any changes you made to your project plan based on their review.
Our institution has a committee in deal of security, health, safety, and environment (K3L). But, they didn’t concern in biosafety of modified organism. Our biosafety committe (K3L) deal on laboratory safety and environment security.

c. Does your country have national biosafety regulations or guidelines? If so, please provide the link to these regulations or guidelines if possible.
Yes, our country have, that is http://indonesiabch.or.id/tentang-bkkhi/

d. According to the WHO Biosafety Manual, what is the BioSafety Level rating of your lab? 
BioSafety Level 1

e. What is the Risk Group of your chasis organism(s), as you stated in question 1 ? if it does not match the BSL rating of your laboratory, please explain what additional safety measures you are taking.
Risk Group 1