Difference between revisions of "Team:NTU-LIHPAO-Taiwan/Safety"

Safety

Abstract

Safety, the most important issue for our team, has two different aspects. It encompasses the necessary precautions to protect ourselves from potential hazards and to prevent release of engineered organisms in the environment. Especially the latter point is often discussed when it comes to synthetic biology and genetic engineering.

In both safety aspects, we communicated with advisors, figured out useful solutions, and put them into practice. With all the received advice, we tried to shape our project and think about every crucial precaution to fulfill the claims of biosafety.

Lab Safety

Although our project only works with BSL 1 organisms, lab safety is still important. To protect ourselves, we have not only received safety training corresponding to our workspace but also followed the rules in the laboratory, such as wearing lab coats and long trousers when working on the bench, or wearing safety glasses and gloves when using dangerous chemicals. With these precautions, we protect ourselves from the daily hazards in the lab.

Environment Safety

In addition to the general lab safety, environment safety is an issue we can never neglect. To prevent undesirable release of genes in the engineered organisms, we have designed a suicide part. This suicide part works like this - without C1, promoter C1 opens and produces nuclease, which causes cell death.

In our products, we add lactose to induce production of C1, which represses cell suicide by nuclease.

By time goes by, the L. casei grows and uses more lactose to make energy after we take the products. Due to the decrease of lactose, C1 can no more be produced and degrade slowly. As C1 is too low to repress the promoter C1, nuclease is made and cleaves every phosphodieaster bonds between nucleic acids, which damages the cell and soon causes cell death.

If the L. casei is strong enough to survive and gets out of our body to the environment, it will soon be dead due to the lack of C1. As for horizontal gene transfer, which we concern about most, the C1 will not be produced either and the transferred cells will soon be killed.

With the design of this suicide part, we hope to reduce the probabilities of the release genes from engineered organisms and keep the environment safe.