Project Safety
How will your project work?
The purpose of our project is to build an internal clock in microbes, in order to let them perform complex self-regulating activities. We mainly used E.coli and yeast as experimental subjects. In E.coli, we produced proteins we need by plasmid transformation, while in yeasts, we integrate genes needed into the genome by gene recombination. There were different fluorescent proteins to report each gene expression. By testing the starting point and variation of their concentrations, we can infer how this system works from the fluorescent protein accumulation pattern. When the fluorescent proteins are expressed accordingly and regularly, the system was built successfully. With further development, this system may be applied to other fields.
What risks might your project pose, if it were fully developed into a real product that real people could use? What future work might you do to reduce those risks?
Our project aims at providing existing micro organism products a more self regulating control and a safer method, which can be used to deal with those safety problems lots of iGEM teams failed to answer. For example, for a currently impossible project about implanting redesigned microbes into human bodies, our system would provide it a very attractive alternative solution to its safety concerns. Certainly, our project itself has its own risks, if the self-regulating suicide genes lost control, precious strains might die. Also, this system cannot avoid the problem of genetic shift.
With those concerns, we added a reset system in the yeast cycle system, in order to prevent the system from accidentally turning on by human error or other factors. This system could save the strains, though we have not done experiments of this area. As for genetic drift, we consider that there has not been any efficient technology to solve this problem, while our system can reduce the possibility of genetic drift to a certain extent by artificially controlling bacteria‘s life.
Of course, risks need good managements, so these kind of products should be properly preserved to avoid the cost of inappropriate turning on.
Laboratory Safety
What risks does your project pose at the laboratory stage? What actions are you taking to reduce those risks?
We have experiments on E.coli and yeasts at the same time, though the E.coli strain DH5a and Top10 are well-developed and relatively safe strains, treating them unscrupulously might still cause contamination to the environment, or even harm to humans. Yeasts cause less damage to human, but as fungi, they might contaminate prokaryotic culture and nearby cell culture rooms. For safety concern, we strictly acquired team members to wear properly during the experiments, which means they had to wear trousers, long sleeve tops, shoes that cover the whole feet, the lab gown and latex gloves. When using harmful reagents, team members must wear masks and operate in the fume hood.
In order to prevent E.coli and yeasts from polluting the environment, we strictly follow the lab treatment disciplines of disposable biological equipments. All used petri dishes and culture will be sent to the fixed collecting locations and go through uniform disposal. Besides, the experiment region and resting area are strictly separated. Also, we have a spare rocking bed used on yeast culturing only and placed in another room, in order to prevent yeasts contamination.
