Team:IONIS Paris/Safety
Bio-Console Safety
Introduction
The Bio-console is a project developed to make science accessible for all and design for all. In this way the safety of the project is one of the most important part. Make sure that the bacteria are not able to be release in nature. To be sure that any bacteria are able to leave the game different measure have been taken; a kill-switch, a killing-liposome and a hermetic microfluidic chip.
Kill Switch
Why do we chose a kill Switch ?
A kill switch is a genetically-encoded suicide trigger. This trigger can be a change in the environment which will make the organism’s life dependent on it. In our project, the change will be the presence or not of light. That is very interesting as we could create a game over in our Bio Console, once we trigger the bacteria’s death through light. Moreover, our team is really concerned about BioSafety. It is important for us to avoid any possibility of escaping from our microfluidic chip. The Kill switch would permit to contain our genetically modified bacteria into the chip through lethality.
How we design it ?
So we aim to construct an efficient kill-switch triggering by light based on the pDawn & pDusk - Toxin systems. In this way we will construct different parts. The firsts will be based on the pDawn system and toxins. We have selected three different toxins; HokD, ccdB and Endolysin/Holin. Toxins will be produced after light stimulation and induce lysis. Then, second part will be based on pDusk system and toxins, this will lead to the cell lysis when the bacteria won’t be exposed to light. Parts will be more difficult to characterized indeed all steps before characterization of the plasmid as plasmid amplification will have to be under light.
Microfluidic chip
A closed environment
The most significant advantage using a microfluidic chip is that it is a closed environment preventing cells from getting into contact with the external environment and such, preventing the cells to spread in an unsuitable environment. As a result the use of the microfluidic chip allows to reduce the risks linked to any bacterial contamination and biological component release.
Moreover, in the Bio-Concole microfluidic system we thought to set a waste disposal system filled by the draining of the entire circuit at the end of the Bio-Console. This waste disposal system is located at the end of the chip and collects all the biological components within the fluids which will be decontaminated by bleaching in addition to the activation of the kill switch system triggered by light.
PROJECT
BactMan's Adventures
OPTOGENETICS
Our scientific core of the project
MICROFLUIDICS
Our challenge in achieving the Bio-console