Team:Virginia/Safety
In general biology, and especially synthetic biology, containment and safety are apex priorities. Our team followed strict safety guidelines and made responsible chassis selections. Beyond emulating previously asserted standards, we improved upon biosafety regulation by developing macro-scale, universal regulatory standards for biological containment devices. We also developed regulations for public lab spaces, which were previously unregulated. Charlottesville Open Bio Labs, a public lab organization, has adopted our safety protocols into their bylaws.
We chose XL1-Blue and JW E. coli strains as our chassis. These are risk group 1 organisms. Our submitted parts are the CBZ cleavage enzyme (Bba_K1879000), and our functional cleavage enzyme biobrick (Bba_K1879001). Our parts are not harmful to plants or animals.
We used ethidium bromide, a known carcinogen, in our experiments. We followed standard protocols for safety with ethidium bromide; namely wearing gloves, isolating tools in contact with EtBr, and disposing of EtBr waste according to regulatory standards.
Our project is inherently safe in its design, as the purpose is to institute a new form of biological containment.
We faced no difficulties shipping our DNA parts to the registry.
Beyond following regulatory guidelines in our lab work, we crafted safety regulations for future biocontainment projects. During the course of our project, we consulted with biosafety experts, biocontainment specialists, and regulatory agencies to inform our regulatory guideline proposals.
