Project Safety
The aim of BNU-China team is preventing cannabis addiction by colonizing intestinal flora to degrade Δ9-THC and is expected to be used by narcotics agent, people reluctant to consume cannabis, medical user and so on. In this year’s course of our project, we utilized Escherichia coli DH5α, Escherichia coli Nissle1917 and Escherichia coli BL21, all of which have been well understood and have been proved to be relatively safe to humans and environment. These strains are all non-pathogenic and are classified as Biosafety Level 1 (BSL-1).
What’s more, we designed an arabinose-induced killing switch and a cold-triggered toxin suicide switch for our microorganism in order to enable users of this microbe to kill engineered bacteria inside their intestines whenever they don’t need and eliminate engineered bacteria that escape the human body. In summary, we have carefully assessed the potential risks and been actively seeking solutions accordingly.
Experiment Safety
All members in BNU-China received rigorous research training and safety education before entering the lab to work. In addition, the entire team is under the supervision of a mentor and in full compliance with the safety and security policies of the iGEM competition. Our laboratories are equipped to BSL-2 and BSL-1 standards and are well qualified to manipulate the microorganisms mentioned above.
