Team:Virtus-Parva Mexico/Safety

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                 <h2 id="sec1">What is it that we do?</h2>
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                   <p>The Bio-NEMS drill is a</p>  
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                   <p>Like most iGEM teams, our project consists of working with microorganisms that are part of the risk group 1 and as such only need to work in Level 1 safety conditions. With this biosafety level 1, only the standard safety precautions need apply when handling our microorganisms. These conditions refer to the work being done on open benches and wearing basic protective equipment such as lab coats, protective eyewear and rubber, or nitrile when needed, gloves. Before being allowed to be alone in either of the labs without a post-graduate student present to oversee us, we had to take a standard safety course. This course covered the subjects of proper waste disposal, the importance of labelling everything inside a lab and what actions to take in case of an emergency. </p>  
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                                 <h3>Project Overview</h3>
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                                 <h3>Question 1: Would any of your project idea raise safety issues in terms of research safety, public safety or environmental safety?</h3>
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                                 Virtus-Parva is a team of Nanotechnology students who aim to create a better world through love,sympathy and endearment… and through the design and development of a novel technology based on micrometric “drills” to attack pathogen agents.
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                                 The strain of E. Coli we chose to work with, DSM 1103 is considered within Biosafety level 1 and as such is considered an agent with minimal potential hazard to laboratory personnel and the environment. In any case an outbreak were to happen, our E. Coli strain doesn’t contain genes with toxin or antibiotic resistance. In case of contact with eyes or mouth, E. Coli can cause infections and as such we use wear gloves when dealing with our bacteria and dispose them in red safety bags a company will then sterilize before throwing them away.  
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First and foremost, we studied different procedures in order to synthesize the strongest and smallest magnetite particles we could make. Magnetite is a molecule that derives from iron, and has observable magnetic properties. Because we wanted to put together magnetite and DNA, we had to make them compatible, task we accomplished by functionalizing it with amino groups, that would allow it to form peptide bonds with our protein, HU. At the same time, our biology team was busy extracting, purifying and transforming E. Coli DNA to work with. This protein, HU, is a histone-like protein normally aids DNA into supercoiling around histones; the “Magnetic-Protein” complex we created mimics the nucleosome in DNA supercoiling process. This allows us to have a DNA “chromatin” with a magnetic core.
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Combining magnetite, DNA and HU protein, we are building magnetic-core machines, which can be controlled through external electrical impulses. Because of the shape of our system, it is possible for it to have linear movement depending on the frequency applied to it, which has the potential to be incorporated into the medical sector as a pathogen-targeted therapy. This was our original idea and module one of our project.
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As we were transforming our E. coli cells, we noticed it wasn’t as fast and efficient as we had hoped, which is how we came up with module two of the project. Quite simply, we wanted to take advantage of the shape of our system and its mobility thanks to magnetism in order to make a more efficient transformation. We were able to verify our method was more efficient by making cells express GFP and RFP, which can then be quantified with optic instruments.
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                <h2 id="sec2">The Idea</h2>
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                    The basis for these “drills” will be NEMS, nano electro-mechanical systems, technology.<br> We took a survey to fellow iGEMers and external people in order to find out how many people knew about the existence of NEMS and if they knew how they worked. Turns out only 36% of survey takers had heard of the term before and of those, only 28% knew what it was!<br><br> Given these statistics, it became part of our project to teach newer generations about our subject.
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                                 <h3>NEMS</h3>
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                                 <h3>Question 2: Are any parts or devices in our project associated with (or known to cause) pathogenicity, infectivity, toxicity, threats to environmental quality or security concerns?</h3>
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                                 NEMS are nanometric electromechanical systems. In this case we take as basis the structure of a resonator which are engineered to make a conversión between energy, such as electric, magnetic, or vibrational into mechanical response.
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                                 The biggest risk comes from E. Coli infections to our team handling bacteria, an issue for which we have taken precautions. There are no other infectivity, toxicity of pathogenicity threats from our project. Security concerns are very low, as there are minimal security risks. Materials used are very common in microbiology labs and cannot be used maliciously or weaponized.  
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How exactly do NEMS come into play in our project?
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Well, by combining an inorganically synthesized nanoparticle, called magnetite and DNA into what we call BioNEMS drill.  
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                <h2 id="sec3">The Making</h2>
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                    Descripcion general de Seccion 3
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                                 <h3>Inorganic Section</h3>
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                                 <h3>Question 3: Do any of the new BioBricks parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?</h3>
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                                 The first part of the synthesis of our magnetite was trying out different methods and characterizing them, to note which method had given us the smallest size nanoparticles. Our first method was synthesis by coprecipitation, of which we prepared nine samples with different concentrations of iron(II) chloride and ammonium hydroxide; from this method we consistently obtained nanoparticles rounding 0.9 to 1nm. Our following method was very similar, but included water in the synthesis: the size of our particles would vary greatly, from 3.89 micrometers to 171 nanometers in size.  
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                                 Our biobricks do not raise any direct safety concerns.
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After choosing the best method possible, it was time to silanize our magnetite in order for it to be biocompatible with DNA and be able to tie them together. In order for the silanization to take place, we used a solution of TEOS (tetraethoxysilane) dispersed in a medium of water and propanol and dripped this mix slowly onto our magnetite. Just like when we synthesized our particles, we tested different concentrations of TEOS and magnetite, as well as different addition rates in order to observe which combination would give us the smallest possible nanoparticles.
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Our results were then characterized by DLS (dynamic light scattering), for which we observed a peak at 39 nm, once coated with TEOS, the peak was moved toward 60 and 80 nm. We also ran our two samples in the IR, comparing the spectra of the pure magnetite and silanized magnetite, we were able to distinguish a peak at 990.2 cm^-1 corresponding to a Si-O bond, confirming the correct silanization of the magnetite. 
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                                 <h3>Biological Section</h3>
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                                 <h3>Question 4: Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?</h3>
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                              The department of Chemical and Biological Sciences is responsible for regulating safety standards and laboratories. The head of the department and its teachers are aware of our project and as such check on us and make sure we are following guidelines. When in doubt, we refer to the biosafety guidelines the CDC has made public.
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Revision as of 01:42, 14 October 2014

Safety

The Next Generation in Molecular Machinery

Safety

Like most iGEM teams, our project consists of working with microorganisms that are part of the risk group 1 and as such only need to work in Level 1 safety conditions. With this biosafety level 1, only the standard safety precautions need apply when handling our microorganisms. These conditions refer to the work being done on open benches and wearing basic protective equipment such as lab coats, protective eyewear and rubber, or nitrile when needed, gloves. Before being allowed to be alone in either of the labs without a post-graduate student present to oversee us, we had to take a standard safety course. This course covered the subjects of proper waste disposal, the importance of labelling everything inside a lab and what actions to take in case of an emergency.

Question 1: Would any of your project idea raise safety issues in terms of research safety, public safety or environmental safety?

The strain of E. Coli we chose to work with, DSM 1103 is considered within Biosafety level 1 and as such is considered an agent with minimal potential hazard to laboratory personnel and the environment. In any case an outbreak were to happen, our E. Coli strain doesn’t contain genes with toxin or antibiotic resistance. In case of contact with eyes or mouth, E. Coli can cause infections and as such we use wear gloves when dealing with our bacteria and dispose them in red safety bags a company will then sterilize before throwing them away.

Question 2: Are any parts or devices in our project associated with (or known to cause) pathogenicity, infectivity, toxicity, threats to environmental quality or security concerns?

The biggest risk comes from E. Coli infections to our team handling bacteria, an issue for which we have taken precautions. There are no other infectivity, toxicity of pathogenicity threats from our project. Security concerns are very low, as there are minimal security risks. Materials used are very common in microbiology labs and cannot be used maliciously or weaponized.

Question 3: Do any of the new BioBricks parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?

Our biobricks do not raise any direct safety concerns.

Question 4: Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

The department of Chemical and Biological Sciences is responsible for regulating safety standards and laboratories. The head of the department and its teachers are aware of our project and as such check on us and make sure we are following guidelines. When in doubt, we refer to the biosafety guidelines the CDC has made public.

Retrieved from "http://2014.igem.org/Team:Virtus-Parva_Mexico/Safety"