Safety in iGEM

Safe Project Design

We chose E. coli as our chassis organism. The organism is well known, non-pathogenic, easy to grow and easy to work with in the lab. We are containing the transformed bacteria in a closed system, a filter. However, should the transformed bacteria escape to the environment, it is unlikely that they should prove dangerous or harmful. The parts we insert are non-pathogenic and will give the transformed bacteria an advantage only in an environment where methane gas is an important carbon source.

Safe Lab Work

We are working in a level 2 facility lab. The lab contains an organism that is potentially harmful to humans, namely:

• We are careful to work only on our assigned lab bench and to wear gloves when appropriate.

• We are of course careful not to wear gloves when this is appropriate, such as when we are working on the lab computer.

• We were all given a thorough Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) tour of the lab by the lab engineer, Bård Enger Mathiesen, and were shown all the safety equipment, such as the fire extinguisher, fire blanket, eyewash station, first aid kit, and so on.

Since we are trying to engineer E. coli with the ability to metabolize methane, there was no getting around methane experiments, and the risk associated with this. The primary risk is explosion and fire hazard. Methane can also displace air and be an asphyxiation hazard, but this is highly unlikely to be a problem given that we work in a fume hood. We prevent explosion hazard primarily by working in fume hood and carefully releasing small amounts of methane through a valve, and releasing methane not into the open air, but into a container.

We made new SOPs based on the University of Oslo (UiO) standard, one for methane incubation and one for methane bubbling through our filter. See attached SOPs. See also attached methane safety data sheet. We also made a general safety scheme, with risk, consequence and countermeasures:

Safe Shipment

Did you face any safety problems in sending your DNA parts to the Registry? How did you solve those problems?