Overview

The organism used in the project is E. Coli, which has risk group or biosafety level of one. That means that is unlikely to cause human or animal disease and, therefore, it is safe to use. 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.

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. If the project result as it is supposed to do, it must not be a danger for any public if the product is not ingested. If it is ingested, E. Coli will cause diarrhea and a little fever depending the patient.

About the environmental impact, the bacteria is modificate in order to cause the death of plague insects, that means that the population of the plague will be reduced, affecting in one or another way, a change in the environment. The insecticidal also can affect some species of the same family but not all, it is difficult to predict its impact and danger because of the lack of information about this novel insecticide, but one we discover what other insects are exposed to the insecticide, we will be able to determine the amount that will be affected by it.

The risk of an accident inside the laboratory depends of the lever of care that the team members have during the practices. The biological parts and organisms represent a risk if they enter in contact with a 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 care. The same goes for the lab equipment; some cannot be used without a responsible authorization or the advice.

We are you addressing these issues in our project design and lab work by taking precautions and using safety equipment in order to prevent an accident. Every member of the team is aware of the risk that means work in the laboratory. Each one know about the security rules during a laboratory practice because we have had biosafety training before the real practices even started. On it we learned about the correct procedures to carry out any experiment; and also about some security precautions referring the material that we were going to use. When using ethidium bromide (risks include: irritant to eyes, skin, mucus, and respiratory tract) we make sure the designated research zone is properly closed and we use the necessary protection. When observing stained DNA, through the use of UV rays, we use special protection for the eyes. While managing electrical devices and circuits, all members of the team were told to handle them with extreme care. This training was in order to prevent accidents and for the success of the project.