Team:Paris Bettencourt/Safety

Summary

In iGEM we take safety seriously. Our project touches sensible topics such as food and human contact so we had a special consideration about safety issues. From strict lab rules to interviews with stakeholders and citizens, we tried to measure public awareness and potential problems in the implementation and safety of our final engineered GMM (genetically modified microorganism) food.

Safety Training and Lab Rules


Figure 1: Our laboratory facilities at the Cochin institut in Paris.
At the beginning of the competition, all team members received a safety training for working in the Biosafety Level 1 laboratory. This training was conducted by the Biosafety officer for INSERM U1001 (Fig. 1) and it included best laboratory practices as described in the WHO laboratory biosafety manual. It included rules about protocols in the lab, protective clothing and equipment, decontamination methods and practices, prevention of the transfer of genetic material and microorganisms, handling chemicals, use of machines and emergency procedures. The safety form was submitted to iGEM HQ as well.

Organisms Used


Figure 1: Our laboratory facilities at the Cochin institut in Paris. Figure 2: Lactobacilli seen by a 1000x Olympus light microscope. False colour. Source: wikipedia.

-Escherichia coli: Risk Group 1. Biological chassis to clone genes, differentiation system and riboswitch sensor.

-Saccharomyces cerevisiae: GRAS. Vitamin A biosynthesis and phytase production. (Ref. US law).

-Lactococcus lactis: Risk Group 1, GRAS status. Vitamin B2 biosynthesis (Fig. 2). (Ref. US law).

-Lactobacillus plantarum: Risk Group 1, GRAS status. (Ref. US law).

-Lactobacillus reuteri: Risk Group 1, GRAS status. (Ref. US law).

-Propionibacterium freudenreichii: Risk Group 1, GRAS status. Vitamin B12 biosynthesis. (Ref. US law).

The source of this information in Europe is the directive 2000/54/EC on the protection of workers from risks related to exposure to biological agents at work. This E.U. directive made by the European Commission divides the biological agents in 4 different biosafety groups. This directives specifies:

Group 1: Unlikely to cause human disease.

Group 2: Can cause human disease and may be a hazard to employees; it is unlikely to spread to the community and there is usually effective prophylaxis or treatment available.

Group 3: Can cause severe human disease and may be a serious hazard to employees; it may spread to the community, but there is usually effective prophylaxis or treatment available.

Group 4: Causes severe human disease and is a serious hazard to employees; it is likely to spread to the community and there is usually no effective prophylaxis or treatment available.

In other countries similar rules and regulations apply, and the system of classification in 4 classes is generally consistent.

Biosafety Issues. The Lab and the Kitchen: Two Different Places

Our project dealt with food, especially with idli, and we tried other recipes. While it was fun to cook all these dishes, we clearly made the difference between the lab and the kitchen. We never tried to taste any food fermented with our synthetically modified bacteria. However, we had a glimpse of the taste of our product would have by adding commercially available vitamins in concentrations our bacteria would produce. We did the measurements in the kitchen, entirely with kitchen equipment. Participants did not find a difference of taste between the idli with vitamins or without them.

Policy regulations and law context


Figure 3: Map of the European Union (2015). Source: wikipedia.

Our project intersects largely with policy regulations as it is intended for human consumption. The law context in the E.U. is one of most restrictive in the world (Fig. 3), and we took their review process into account and considered the implication of the EU law in our project. The compendium of regulations and directives that regulate this field is: General food law (Regulation (EC) No 178/2002), GM food and feed regulation (Regulation (EC) 1829/2003), Deliberate release of GMO (Directive 2001/18/EC), Contained use of GMO (Directive 98/81/EC) and there is also a law for additives for animal nutrition (Regulation (EC) No 1831/2003) but that last one does not apply in our project as it is intended for human consumption.

The scientific authority in the EU is the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA). We engaged citizens from outside our team in a demo review board. They reviewed the project following the EFSA guidelines and their output is described in the Review board part of our wiki.

In India, the law context. The release of transgenic crops in India is regulated by the Indian Environment Protection Act, which was made in 1986. The Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBSC), the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) and the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) review any genetically modified organism to be released. Transgenic crops also needing permission from the Ministry of Agriculture (source: TENAU Agritech website). We had interviews with Indian authorities to know more about this topic. The outputs are described in the Design part of our wiki, and also (more detailed) in the Acceptance page.