Team:Warwick/Safety

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Safety

Safety and biosafety are important aspects of any genetic engineering project.

Biosafety is the prevention of accidental release of GMOs into the environment, this was particularly important to us, since unlike other projects, our target organism was to survive very harsh conditions and was to be in contact with potentially highly virulent organisms. This is because the organism was designed with survival in the sewers in mind, where high tolerance to various pH changes and other physical factors was key to success. Because of this, the release of a GMO of this caliber in the environment would quickly create havok in sewer systems, as it would take over the natural ecosystem present in sewage water. In addition, horizontal gene transfer is also a great concern. This is because of the nature of plasmid DNA, which can be exchanged between bacterial species. This is expecially troubling, as the presence of virulent bacterial strains (E.Coli O160H7 and Salmonella) could potentially give rise to virulent strains uptaking our plasmid, creating an augumented virulent strains. Because of these risks, great care has been put into the sterilization of equipment, treatment of lab waste and in sterile technique.

Lab Safety

In terms of our project, safety tackles the minimization of risks taken by our researchers during the project. Safety is mainly established by the use of proper techniques and equipment. Because of this, all members of the project, including non-researchers, where asked to undergo rigorous lab induction sessions. This created a safe working environment and prevented both injury and damage to equipment. In addition, various risk assessements detailing each experiment conducted were made, this allowed for a more structured and methodical approach to lab safety, which ultimately leads to a safer working environment and reduced risk of accidental exposure to GMOs both in respect to the environment and the researchers.

Ethics

GMOs gave rise to several ethical issues, some of which have been tackled by our project. The most pressing one is the one of release into the environment, iGem (and all but some institutions) agree that release of GMOs is not possible.