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Safety

As with any project involving culturing bacteria, appropriate safety measure were taken with our project. Though none of the bacteria we work with are human pathogens or environmental liabilities, it is possible that unwanted contaminants could be unintentionally cultured in large volumes. Therefore, we treat every culture as if it were dangerous and take important precautions, such as wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), cleaning up any spills with 10% bleach or 70% ethanol, and autoclaving all culture tubes and plates before disposing of their contents. Whenever the team was performing procedures, everybody wore safety goggles and gloves. We followed all procedures very carefully, and we were circumspect with cleanup after experiments. The team was supervised by Mrs. Standeven, Dr. Styczynski, and Mrs. Cochran the entire time we were in the Georgia Tech lab.
1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of researcher safety,public safety, or environmental safety?
Our project uses E. Coli bacteria and according to the World Health Organization Laboratory Biosafety Manual, our project is at a level 1. If the project goes according to plan, there is no risk to the environment or the general public however there is a slight risk to team members due to the use of ethidium bromide when running gel electrophoresis. Therefore, we follow all safety procedures very carefully. For example, team members change their gloves after using anything at the ethidium bromide workstation. All of our team members have recieved biosafety training at Lambert High School and have taken a safety test Additionally, several members of the team have completed Right to Know, General Lab Safety, Biohazard training and Recombinant DNA Safety Training offered by Georgia Institute of Technology to further secure the safety of our team members and project and to ensure the procedures are as safe as possible. If our contamination procedures go wrong, it will pose no threat to the environment because all of our bacteria is safe. All waste was disposed of through proper biohazard safety protocols, including sterilizing, using the autoclave, and cleaning with bleach and ethanol. We keep samples under lock and key.
2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise safety issues?
No, none of the BioBricks that were made by us this year raise any safety issues. They are a 100% safe for the environment, general public, and our team members handling them.
3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
We are working with Principal Investigator Dr. Mark Styczyinski, and our project is under review by the Georgia Tech biosafety review board. The review board is completely in favor of our project since it is in compliance with university requirements as well as national regulations.
4. Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?
To deal with safety issues, for future iGEM competition, all Biobrick part should contian a potential knockout device. Also, Biobrick parts can be screened for potentially dangerous pathogens through the use of a variety of software that can be found at universities like Georgia Tech.

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