In every Synthetic Biology Project, Biosafety is an important issue, the making of new organisms non existing in Nature raises some worries about the posible consequences if they are released to the environment. So, the first rule when transforming cells is to design them in such manner that they become unable to survive outside the lab.
In our Project we are working with parts of an infectious agente as is a virus, so we feel obligated to be extremely careful when manipulating our bacterial cells. We have designed 5 proteins inserting the virus epitopes in the external loops of its structure, so we are not working with toxins or the whole virus particles, just some small sequences of aminoacids that constitute their immunogenic parts.
We have been working on a laboratory with biosafety level 2 to work. All members of our Team have followed strictly the protocols and all biosafety measures as soon as we get inside the lab. We wear gloves, masks and coats, work under the chamber, sterilize media, instruments and recipients, discard everything properly when our tasks are done, as indicated in manuals and procedures.
We work at the Institute for Microbiological Research where a Comission on Biosafety works on a regular basis, their members are appointed for a year and are rotated within all the labs in the building, so nobody is aware when inspections are performed. We follow rules as we were been observed all the time. We follow rules and during the time we have been performing our experiments, note ven one accident has happened arround. We work safely and we make sure everybody understands the rules before he or she is allowed in the lab.