We have reviewed our organisms and parts against the White List. All the parts and bacterial strains that we used are in the Risk Group 1
We have submitted to iGEM headquarters “About Our Lab” and “About Our Project” questionnaires by the June 26th deadline
We have submitted to iGEM headquarters the “Final Safety Form” by the August 28th deadline
About Safety
We, the UNITN iGEM Team want to follow high standards of safe and responsible biological engineering. Before entering the lab we attended mandatory on-line courses regarding lab safety with final tests. In particular we focused on the following topics:
- General considerations on risks and prevention
- Electrical Hazard
- Chemical Hazard
- Biological Hazard
- Compressed gasses and cryogenic liquids
We also attended the “Health and safety at the workplace” course, which is mandatory for all students and workers at the University of Trento.
Safe Project Design
Who will use your product? What opinions do these people have about your project?
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Where will your product be used? On a farm, in a factory, inside human bodies, in the ocean?
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If your product is successful, who will receive benefits and who will be harmed?
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What happens when it's all used up? Will it be sterilized, discarded, or recycled?
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Is it safer, cheaper, or better than other technologies that do the same thing?
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Working Safely... with Parts
All the parts we used throughout the project are NOT toxic or dangerous for humans or the environment. We neither worked with proteins toxic themselves, nor we used enzymes that synthesize toxic molecules. In addition to basic parts from the registry (i.e. RBS, promoters, β-carotene, etc), we also used two genes from the SAR86 uncultured bacteria. These genes are proteorhodopsin, which was extracted from the Registry (BBa_K773002) and blh (15,15’-β-carotene dioxygenase), which was synthesized by Genescript. There is no associated risk level with the uncultured bacteria SAR86, however we are using only DNA sequences that encodes for genes, which carry distinct functions that are no harmful to humans, or the environment. We have clarified this issue with iGEM Safety Office.
We did NOT use any virulence factors in our organisms.
The parts we used are to be considered safe as single parts and also as combined. Environmental dispersion of those parts would not represent a biological hazard or danger.
Working Safely... with Organisms
All the bacterial strains used are from Risk Group 1. We used the following strains:
- One Shot® TOP10 Chemically Competent E. coli
- K12 - NEB 10-beta E. coli
- K12 - JM109 E. coli
- BL21 - NEB Express E. coli
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
Last but non least we adopted the appropriate PPE during the lab work. We always used lab coats, nitrile gloves and goggles. We safely operated with biological material under the laminar flow cabinet BioAir SAFEMATE Series Class II 1.8.
We used chemicals that are associated with hazard (ethidium bromide, azide, organic solvents) under the chemical hood Fume Hood MOD. ASEM® 120EN New - Class 0.
We carefully revised all the Material Safety Datasheet of each compound that was used prior to start an experiment.