Team:UIUC Illinois/Safety
Introduction
When dealing with genetically modified organisms, it's important to prioritize safety. E. Coli is seen as very harmful to the public eye.
Escherichia coli is crucial in modern bioengineering due to its fast reproductive process which can take as little as 20 minutes. This cemented our decision to use E. Coli as our preliminary organism for this project, and took extra precautions to make sure it was done safely. The rest of this page outlines the methods we used to do this.
Handling Biological Materials: We use an open bench or biosafety cabinets when appropriate to handle biological materials safely. All biological waste is autoclaved and disposed of appropriately.
Handling Chemical Waste: For waste containing glyphosate, we separate them from non-chemically contaminated waste and dispose them through our university's Division of Research Safety after being autoclaved.
Handling Liquid Nitrogen: Extra precautions are taken including using cryogenic gloves and aprons, face shields, and access to the outdoors to prevent accidental inhalation of liquid nitrogen vapours.
Additional Training: Our host lab Institute of Genomic Biology at UIUC works to provide a safe environment for researchers, support staff, students and visitors, and encourage the development of safety cultureby mandating IGB Safety Training and safety exam on the material. The topics covered include: risk assessment, containment, biosafety levels, waste disposal, and emergency preparedness.
In order to reduce risks, we made some decisions in our project design. We used the DH5alpha cell line which is non-pathogenic and would pose a low risk if it were to excape the lab. Furthermore, our chassis is non-pathogenic although they were modified to be resistant to antibiotics.
There are some safety issues regarding real world implementation of our project. In the theoretical event of using our engineered bacteria for boremediation in the environment:
[1] Our bacteria will be resistant to certain antibiotics, which is a health and safety concern as it makes biological control of these organisms more difficult.
[2] Introducing engineered organisms into soil or wastewater could have unintended consequences on the microbial composition.
[3] Once released into the environment, it becomes nearly impossible to control the potential spread of such organisms. For example, horizontal gene transfer could pass on antibiotic resistance to the native microbes which could pose a health risk by causing an imbalance in the niche.
[4] There are regulations related to the release of genetically modified organisms which we would need to strictly adhere to.
