Team:UNIPV-Pavia/Safety

Safety issues
Does our project raise concerns about researcher, public or environmental safety? The goal of our project is to obtain engineered bacteria, in order to mimic logic gates and circuits. The proteins and the protein/DNA interactions used to achieve this are taken directly from basic bacterial or bacteriophage-specific functions, without any toxin or pathogenic factor. Our engineered E. coli, moreover, belong to a lab-specific strain, TOP10, which is free of toxin- or resistance-containing plasmids; so, if handled properly and not dispersed in the environment, they don’t present any biological risk for researchers and public health. What does our biosafety responsible think of our project? The biosafety board in our lab, and particularly its manager, agreed with our safety considerations and approved the project, without any particular restriction, apart from routinely-used safety procedures. Apart from E. coli and biological risk, are there any sources of chemical/physical risk? During our operations, we handle IPTG, ethidium bromide and UV rays. We handle IPTG and ethidium bromide carefully under a dedicated hood, while, upon gel evaluation, we use a protective glass on the lamp and we also wear protective glasses against UV rays. So, physical and chemical risks are minimized. Have the students been properly trained to use lab equipment? The biosafety board manager of our lab adequately trained the two students before they started working at the bench and he is always helpful and ready to solve any problem that may arise during their work. In particular, he was careful in explaining the functioning of the instruments that could be source of any risk.