Team:CSU Fort Collins/Safety
Our Safety Program
Safe Project Design
Product design and implementation decisions are often made with safety as a priority. Safety begins, and belongs, in the design process. By designing safety into the product, several hazards can be avoided from the start.
✔ Non-pathogenic chassis
The chassis that we chose for our project was Escherichia coli strain K-12. This strain was chosen specifically due to it being placed in risk group 1 by the World Health Organization and therefore generally does not cause disease in healthy adult humans. We decided to cut and paste the Staphylococcus aureus quorum sensing gene circuit into our chosen chassis rather than using Staphylococcus aureus as our chassis in order to have a safer project design.
✔ Induced Lethality
One aspect of our project was focused on developing a trigger mechanism. The idea behind this is that our gene circuit will activate when Staphylococcus aureus is detected and will then switch off when Staphylococcus aureus is no longer detected anymore. This switch was built by utilizing the ultrasensitive quorum sensing pathway of Staphylococcus aureus. This added feature of our product makes it safer and more effective since it only activates when the target bacteria is detected.
✔ Bacteriophage Safety
Bacteriophages have very high specificity for their target bacteria making them safer for use. The use of bacteriophages for antimicrobial purposes is on the rise. In the food industry the FDA generally recognized as safe Listex™ P100 is used to reduce Listeria monocytogenes growth. Bacteriophages only infect bacterial cells and have no danger to humans.