Safety

Safety Within the Lab

Safety and containment were a top priority for our team. We wanted to ensure all of our team members met the training requirements as outlined in the University of Calgary’s safety policy. Mandatory training comprised of a biosafety and Workplace Hazardous Materials Information Systems (WHMIS) course. Furthermore, all team members participated in a two week molecular biology workshop in which students got to safely practice important lab techniques.

For the duration of our project we used E. coli (Top10) and B. subtilis (com K)which are both level one organisms. The safety precautions stated on Material Safety Data Sheets were taken into consideration when using chemical and personal protective equipment was enforced at all times within the lab. Lastly, all undergraduate students were supervised at all times by graduate supervisors or the lab technician.

Containment Considerations

B. subtilis is a gram positive bacterium which naturally resides in the soil and the human gut. During conditions of energy starvation B. subtilis undergoes sporulation. For our project, we used a super competent strain of B. subtilis referred to as the “com K strain” because naturally transformation could be induced when desired by simply flooding the bacteria with a xylose solution.

We are inserting our reporter gene into the thrC locus of the B. subtilis genome which encodes for an enzyme required to make threonine. Disruption of the thrC locus will cause our bacteria to exhibit auxotrophy. Therefore, the bacterium will only survive if supplemented with a media containing threonine. Since B. subtilis is commonly found in the environment and the human gut, we believe that it poses little risk to humans and other species. However, by making our engineered bacteria auxotrophic we can ensure that it will be unable to survive if it leaves the parameters of our device.

Safety Forms

Please follow the links below to view our safety forms!