Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/Safety-Questions

1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:
Researcher safety
The organism used in the project is E. Coli, which has risk group or biosafety level of one. That means that is almost unlikely to cause human or animal disease and, therefore, it is safe to use. In order to avoid risk by using e. coli, only capacity personal is allowed to work with it, also in case of accident e. coli cannot survive outside the laboratory where the temperature conditions are not controlled. The protein that is going to be synthetized derived for beauveria bassiana and it also belongs to the risk group one. Like any micro-organism, B. bassiana has the potential to act as an opportunistic pathogen, but as the literature study demonstrates, Beauveria infections are extremely rare events. Anyway, there is no need to work directly with, B. bassiana because is just an organisms from which the insecticidal part is derived.

Public safety
There are also some potential risks for the team members while they are working in the laboratory. The laboratory used is a basic biosafety level one, only used for basic teaching and research; it is an open bench work. The only risk in this laboratory is that the team members do not follow the security rules for every laboratory, causing an accident. To avoid this, all the team members have received basic training in laboratory equipment before lab work. If the project results as it is supposed to, it must not be a danger for any public, as long as the product is not ingested. If ingested, E.coli can cause diarrhea and a little fever depending on the patient. The risk of an accident inside the laboratory depends on the level of caution that the team members have during the practices. The biological parts and organisms represent a risk if they get in contact with the body. We are working with E. coli strains that are specifically weakened for laboratory use. On the other hand, there are some equipment and chemicals that represent a danger if they are not used correctly. Some chemicals used in laboratory represent a safety risk, so all members of the team were told to handle them with extreme attention. The same goes for the lab equipment; some cannot be used without responsible authorization.

Environmental safety.
About the environmental impact, the bacteria was modified in order to synthetize a bio insecticide that stops the growing or causes death of plague insects; that means that the plague’s population will be reduced, causing a alteration in the environment. The bio insecticide will affect some families of the lepidopteran species; in order to regulate its impact, we control its production with the thermo-sensor and its fast degradation rate. Anyway, it is difficult to predict its impact and danger because of the lack of information about this novel insecticide, but once we discover its effect on other insects when exposed to the insecticide, we will be able to determine the amount that will be affected by it.

2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise safety issues?
Yes, the part on which we synthetized Vip3cA3 implies an impact on the environment if it is not controlled; but its fast degradation rate ensures that out of controlled conditions, the bioinsecticide will not represent any danger. Did you document these issues in the Registry?
It is not in the registry yet. How did you manage to handle the safety issue?
By regulating the production of the bioinsecticidal we avoid any kind of damage to the environment, also use this kind of insecticidal is safer than use the common chemical ones because it do not accumulate in the environment and only affect a Little part of the environment population under conditions where it it necessary.

How could other teams learn from your experience?
It´s important that before the teams decide their project they think about the kind impact that their project can have in environment. They have to know as the risk in small populations as its far-reaching impact in order to ensure it´s not dangerous, and in case that it affects it, to prepare the regulations to make it safe.

3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
Yes, there is a few group in charge of the laboratory and they also are the responsables of the biosafety in the CIDEB high school.
What does your local biosafety group think about your project?
The one in charge, Miss Elsa Yolanda Flores, said that we have been working really good comparing the last year team, she was really pleasent with our laboratory rules posters, and she conclude that we have really clear how to work and the rules that we have to follow in laboratory.

4. Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions?
Procedures can always be improved, in this case the experience that we gain working in the laboratory and the information that we obtained going to official companies to know their safety process give us a more mature and real view of the real importance and impact of safety procedures. Also to promote the importance of follow the laboratory security rules take us one step forward in prevention of accidents. The point is to make the explanation of rules interesting, striking and simple to make a real impact.

How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?
The interesting thing about Biosafety engineering is that we can regulate the production of what we want to produce, having a responsible view and thinking about the long-term impact we can know what will need to be regulate.