Team:Austin UTexas/Safety

SAFETY

Please visit the main Safety page to find this year's safety requirements & deadlines, and to learn about safe & responsible research in iGEM.

When working with E. coli ''∆guaB'', TOP 10, MDS42, BL21 (DE3), and BW25113, our iGEM team considered a number of potential safety hazards, including the fact that we were working with a genetically modified organism.

Biological safety precautions were taken, and a check-out form was not required for our strains of E.Coli. Our plasmids are not inherently dangerous; they only contain antibiotic resistance genes and a fluorescent reporter. The main risk would be if we send out the ''∆guaB'' E. coli used in the caffeine part of our project to more labs and increasing its use, the chance of it escaping would increase. However, the ''∆guaB'' E. coli are significantly less fit than wild-type E. coli, and will not survive very long in the wild because of a lack of caffeine that it needs to grow on. Should the project ever grow, we may want to add some sort of way to kill the ''∆guaB'' E. coli should they ever escape, or make them auxotrophic in some way so that they would not be able to survive if they escaped. The other strains of E.Coli used for measuring fluorescence levels do not pose any significant harm inside or outside of lab since they contain ?????? The only potential chemical safety concern of working with the ncAAs used in this project was that a strong base was required to dissolve one of the compounds. Otherwise, the risks were minimal, and as long as PPE was worn, there was no significant danger to us, the lab, or the community.