Safety

The EPFL iGEM team was interested in several safety aspects of this project.

Is Asaia dangerous to humans?

Asaia is not dangerous for humans. When working with Asaia in the lab, no special safety measures were taken more than for working with E.Coli. Because our test on infection of flies with Asaia gave only negative results, we think that Asaia has a very high specificity for the mosquito.

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

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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, introducing our modified organism in mosquito's population should not be harmful. Further test would be needed to see if it is possible to make the modified Asaia more fit to the environnement than the WT Asaia. We should also make sure that the expression of the immunotoxin does not weaken the mosquito, because this would prevent our bacteria population to expand efficiently. Compared to the current solution that is killing as much mosquitoes as we can, making them resistant to malaria by an alteration of their gut flora seems less radical, and less prone to dramatic ecological changes.