Safety

The EPFL team was interested in several safety aspects of this project. We conducted our project in full accordance with the biosafety rules at epfl.

Is Asaia dangerous to humans?

Asaia is not dangerous for humans. When working with Asaia in the lab, no additional safety measures need to be taken, as compared with E. coli. Because our test on infection of flies with Asaia was negative, we think that Asaia has a very high specificity for mosquitoes.

Can the immunotoxin or the P-proteins be dangerous for humans?

All proteins that we expressed or planned to express in E. coli and in Asaia are Safety Level 1, that is they pose no significant risk to humans and special safety precautions need not be taken.

The toxin part of the Immunotoxin is a synthetic peptide that has been shown to lyse Plasmodium falciparum , but there is no danger for humans.

In order to make the biobricks for the P25 and P28 proteins we acquired genomic DNA from P. falciparum. There was no risk for us or the environment, because it was just DNA. Although those two proteins come from the pathogen P. falciparum, they are not dangerous themselves. An expert on P. falciparum (Prof. Christian Doerig from the Global Health Institute at EPFL), from whom we obtained the genomic DNA, assured us that there is absolutely no risk associated with P25 and P28.

What would be the ecological impact?

We also wondered about the ecological aspect of our project. Because Asaia is not dangerous to humans, and seems to be very specific for the mosquito, releasing our Asaia in the wild to infect mosquitoes should not pose a significant risk to the environment. We can however give no guarantees that this is really the case. Ecosystems are very complex and there is no way of predicting the effect without limited tests in real system. Additional tests would be necessary to see if it is possible to make the modified Asaia persist in the environment, that is to make it fitter than the WT it most likely will be competing against in its niche. To have a lasting effect, we also need to make sure that the expression of the immunotoxin does not weaken the mosquito, because this would weaken the bacterium's capability of infecting large populations. Compared to the current solution, which is killing as many mosquitoes as possible, making them resistant to malaria by an alteration of their gut flora is much more targeted and probably more sustainable. But then again, remember what happened with the rabbits in Australia?

Social impact

Through our human practices movie and questionnaire, we gathered clear evidence, that people are very skeptical towards synthetic biology. An important issue for future projects will be to convince the public of their usefulness and safety.

Conclusion

• Our project (in its current stage) poses no risk to researchers, the public or the environment.
• None of our BioBricks pose any safety problems.
• We conducted our experiments in full accordance with the biosafety rules at epfl.