• Start
• Team
  • Members
  • TU Braunschweig
  • Official Team Profile
  • Attributions
• Project
  • Project Outline
  • Results
  • Engineering Principles
  • Approach
  • Potential Impact
  • Parts submitted to the registry
  • Notebook
  • Protocols
  • Acknowledgements
• Human Practices
  • Overview
  • Activities
  • Guide Part 1 - Communication strategy
  • Guide Part 2 - Implementation
  • Guide Part 3- Media Coverage Report
  • Guide Part 4 - Social Media Analysis
• Cooperations
• Safety
• Judging
• 

Safety

View our safety form here. Safety forms were approved on September 29, 2013 by the iGEM Safety Committee.

Project Safety Concerns

While designing our project biosafety was a very important topic for us. Thus, our project consists of regulation of bacterial growth or even better regulation of bacterial growth by themselves depending on each other. The two main parts we constructed contain an inducible Quorum Sensing dependent antibiotic resistance. The survivability of the bacteria is coupled to the expression of the antibiotic resistance gene which will only be induced when the other strain is present in the same culture broth or if synthetic autoinducer is added. If one strain is eliminated, the whole bacterial consortium dies; hence, we deemed that no other biological safety mechanisms are necessary yet.
For the future the regulation by an auxotrophic chassis is planned instead of the regulation by antibiotic resistances. This way the use of antibiotics can completely be avoided.

Laboratory safety concerns

Guiding principle: Avoid hazardous chemicals, biological material and situations if possible!

Main risks at the laboratory
To enable sterile work some ethanol was used to clean working space, with the advice that ethanol is easy flammable and only should just be used in small areas.
For our cultivations we had to add antibiotics to our media, which were handled with care because large amounts of them can cause harmful effects to health and could lead to resistances.
The major hazard during our lab work was the regular use of UV light and ethidium bromide, which is a DNA intercalating agent and can therefore cause cancer. Both had to be used for the visualization of gel electrophoresis.

Used organisms
The iGEM Team Braunschweig 2013 worked exclusively with non-pathogenic strains of E. coli, which means working with the lowest possible risk level.

Strain	Risk group	Risk to humans
E. coli XL1 Blue MRF'	1	No human pathogen, but may cause irritation to skin, eyes, and respiratory tract and may affect kidneys.
E. coli Top10F'	1	No human pathogen, but may cause irritation to skin, eyes, and respiratory tract and may affect kidneys.
E. coli JM109	1	No human pathogen, but may cause irritation to skin, eyes, and respiratory tract and may affect kidneys.

Safety equipment
To create a safe working environment, the provided lab space was equipped with safety showers, eye shower, fire-extinguishers and a fire blanket. Furthermore lab coats, gloves and safety goggles for all team members were available at any time. For protection against carcinogenic substances like ethidium bromide a special labeled area in the lab was used.
Equipment which was in contact with biological material and could not be reused was disposed in biohazard waste and autoclaved.

Personal safety
The iGEM Team Braunschweig 2013 focused a lot on self depending safety. In order to achieve that every team member had to attend in a special safety information training regarding safe handling of equipment, chemicals and biological material as well as general safety advice before starting any wet lab work. All team members got a tour and additional supervision in the lab and were only working in groups of at least two. Furthermore the lab work was coordinated by two team members who supervised the others when using new equipment or technique. During lab work the team members avoided hazardous chemicals whenever possible. In case hazardous chemicals could not be avoided appropriate safety measurements were taken.

Bioethics

In the project different bacterial strains of E. coli K12 were used. Since bacterial cultivations have been extensively exploited in laboratory and are generally accepted in public’s opinion it is believed that the project does not raise any bioethical questions.
If our approach is applied to existing biotechnological processes it might be seen as a benefit for society. As a bacterial consortium has the ability to perform more complex tasks - from wastewater treatment to the synthesis of complex biological compounds from renewable resources - it contributes to more sustainable processes.

Environmental impact

The constructs were designed for laboratory cultivations only. If accidently exposed to the environment the impact has to be considered low to negligible since only E. coli K12 safety strains were used. However, if the constructs will be used with species of higher risk levels the environmental impact has to be reconsidered. This projects aims to help to create an environmentally friendly way to cope with industrialization and bulk production. Hence, future perspectives offer more sustainability for the world.