Safety in synthetic biology
Safety is an essential part of synthetic biology. For a project like this, it is rather obvious that lab safety is a priority. It directly affects the immediate well being of the people in the lab. Other aspects of safety such as conducting socially responsible science might be less intuitive, but just as important nonetheless. When working with science, you have an obligation to ensure the ethics of your work and to consider the risks of it being misused. This is especially important in a field such as synthetic biology due to its ability to affect human health and the environment at mass scale. On this page, we want to highlight our efforts to ensure both a safe environment to conduct experiments, but also to ensure that the results of our work doesn’t have malicious consequences.
Safe Project Design
Working with strains gathered from the environment, which had not
completely been classified to species level, meant an inherent uncertainty
in the risks of our project. To minimize these risks, we took certain
precautionary measures such as carefully selecting strains which at genus
level indicated no pathogenic risks. Further we consulted the iGEM Safety
and Security Committee about the safety of our environmental strains,
after which we decided not to move forward with some of the strains.
To express our chromoproteins, we decided to use common lab strains of E.coli; DH5-α, MG1655 and BL21(DE3) as the chassis. Since these strains are non-pathogenic and generally have low fitness outside the laboratory environment, they pose no immediate threat to human health. However, the plasmids encoding the chromoproteins harbor genes that make the bacteria resistant to certain antibiotics to aid in the screening process. In our project, we have mostly used plasmids with kanamycin resistance genes. Great care was taken when disposing of samples containing kanamycin or these resistant strains, as to not contribute to the antibiotic resistance that already exists in the environment. The cells were treated with jodopax, and infected waste that had been in contact with these cells were sent for sterilization prior to destruction.
When designing our experiments we applied the substitution principle, stating that in any case where a dangerous chemical can be replaced by a safer one, it should be. This impacted experiments such as agarose gel electrophoresis, where the TBE buffer was substituted with a more harmless TAE buffer, and the mutagenic DNA stain ethidium bromide substituted with Sybr Safe. When snap freezing the bacterial cells, we substituted liquid nitrogen with dry ice. Both liquid nitrogen and dry ice can cause serious frost bites if mishandled. However, since dry ice is not as cold as liquid nitrogen and is generally easier to handle (a solid as opposed to a liquid), dry ice was seen as a safer option.
Safety training
In order to work safely, you need knowledge of how and why to do so. To prepare us for the work in the laboratory, we completed an introductory safety course held by our biosafety officer Henrik Gradstedt. In this course we learnt basics about safety equipment in our lab such as fire extinguishers and eye showers and about emergency exits. We also participated in a practical which demonstrated how easy it can be to unknowingly cause contamination through the use of UV liquids. This highlighted the importance of having a clean workbench at all times and knowing how to properly use protective gloves and how to take them off in a safe way without contaminating your skin.
In addition to this we also went through a course in waste management held by our environmental chemist Mikael Olsson, where we learned about storage and handling of various types of chemicals as well as how all the waste we generated should be handled to guarantee a safe and sustainable environment for us working in the lab and for other personnel in the facility.
Safe Lab Work
Our everyday safety practices included:
- Disinfecting all lab benches with 70% ethanol at the end of each day
- Wearing lab coats whenever being in the lab (but never outside of the lab!)
- Thorough hand hygiene, making sure to wash hands whenever entering or leaving the lab
- Whenever working with bacteria, we wore disposable nitrile gloves, except when using bunsen burners due to the risk of the plastic burning into the skin
- A principle of never working alone in the lab, to ensure there was always someone there to help in case of an emergency
- Wearing glasses with UV protection whenever using the fluorescent light table
- Proper labeling of tubes and glass ware to warn each other of the potential dangers of the contents and to prevent mix-ups and misuse
- Maintaining a clean and organized working environment
Socially responsible science
Synthetic biology has the power to change the world - for the best or for the worst. Therefore, whenever
conducting research within the realm of synthetic biology, it is of great importance to consider the ethics
and the potential impact the project has on the world.
The research that we conduct in our project should be considered low risk. The bacterial and fungal strains
that we use are all of biosafety level 1 and pose no immediate threat to human health. The procedure of disposing
of genetically modified strains and antimicrobial substances follow guidelines for safe waste management set by
the university to prevent introduction into the environment.
The aim of our project is to expand today’s collection of chromoproteins by identifying new chromoproteins.
We also want to improve already known chromoproteins to make them more attractive for downstream applications
such as in vivo biosensors or biodyes. By contributing to the growing chromoprotein collection, we hope to offer
new molecular tools that can be aid in research, and also to be a part of the driving force towards a more
sustainable way of dyeing textiles and other materials. It is known that practically all types of research can
be skewed to serve people with malicious intentions. However, the idea that someone would use our project to cause
any harm seems very far-fetched and it is hard to imagine what that would be. We are therefore pleased to have
designed a low risk project that aims to contribute to a good cause.