Team:WHU-China/Safety

• Home
• Project
  • Inspiration
  • Description
  • Design
  • Model
  • Demonstrate
  • Future
• Experiment
  • Results
  • Notebook
  • Protocol
• Hardware
  • Introduction
  • Evolution
• Human Practices
  • HP overview
  • Integrated HP
  • Public HP
• Safety
• Parts
  • Parts overview
  • Contribution
  • Improve
• Team
  • Team member
  • Collaborations
  • Attribution

Safety

General Laboratory Safety

The iGEM Team WHU-China is in full compliance with the safety and security rules of the iGEM competition.

The laboratory of our team falls under the bio-safety level 1. This level is the lowest bio-safety level but was sufficient for all our experiments. Although our experiments involved in Aspergillus japonicus and Penicillium funiculosum, none of them are included in the risk group.

Before we started our work in the lab, all team members received a safety training during an introductory wet-lab safety meeting.

After the training we had to pass a safety tests. Those tests included an introduction in the laboratory machinery, but also covered the use of chemicals. Moreover, we have set seriously rules in our laboratory to prevent our team members from making dangerous mistakes. At all times, a supervisor or instructor was present when work was conducted in the laboratory.

Project safety

Component

All the bacteria and their products involved in our project are harmless to human body and the environment.

• Bacteria Cellulose, which is a kind of sugar that can be synthesized by natural bacteria and can be degraded via cellulose enzyme or solutions with extreme pH.


• Cellulose Binding Domain and Antioxidant peptides are harmless protein to human and can be easily degraded.


• Antimicrobial peptides that we chose are especially toxic for those filamentous fungi. They won’t be toxic for human-beings, in reverse, it can be environment friendly as it may prevent the antibiotics abuse.

Thus, the components of our project are safety!

Hardware

To ensure that out engineered E.coli will not escape out of our system, we took corresponding measures in our hardware design.

• We designed a barrier for sealing the whole restoration device, so that the bacteria we add can not escape.


• During the restoration process, we will monitor the whole system carefully to prevent the escape of bacteria.


• After the restoration, we will wash the surface of the silk relics that we restored. By using this cleaning system, we can remove most of the E.coli on the silk. Then we will collect and dispose our engineered E.coli .


• Before we open our device and take out the silk, we will perform an infrared thermal scanning of the silk, only after we confirm that there is no residual engineered bacteria would we open the device.

Through the careful design of the hardware, we can ensure the whole repair process is safe and free from leakage of engineering bacteria.

Suicide

Even though our hardware can guarantee the safety of our project, we still consider the possibility of bacteria remaining between the silk fibroin fibers. Therefore, in order to eliminate the environmental pollution caused by engineering bacteria, we plan to add a suicide system based on the realization of near-infrared light system in the future.

Through the careful design of the hard mold, we can ensure the whole repair process is safe and free from leakage of engineering bacteria.

As we can see, this near-infrared light system is controlled by two wavelengths of light. When we give 760nm light, the photosensitive protein is inactivated, which can inhibit promoter PBr_crtE turning on. When we give 680nm of light, the photosensitive protein is in excited state, and then if we add a set of Non-gate after the target gene controlled by the promoter PBr_crtE and a suicide gene after the Non-gate，we can achieve the ultimate layer of security .