Team:BNDS China/Safety

Safety

Safety is undeniably the most important element in our project. Not only our design of the project should involve no toxic or allergic chemicals, but also, we have to operate everything carefully and obey the lab disciplines.

Before we head into the lab

Our team received lectures about lab safety from teachers from Bluepha Lab specifically before entering the ‘door of experiment’. We were taught to obey all the fundamental rules in biology laboratories such as separating experimental wastes from the daily ones and putting them into specific cylinders, not eating or drinking in experiment areas, always wearing gloves, lab coats, and trousers when doing experiments, and so on. These helped us to form a conscious in our mind to warn us when we are making wrong operation.
Through the lectures, we were not only given verbal instructions, but as well tried under the guard of teachers the actual experiments of several basic procedures—agarose gel electrophoresis, PCR, and Gibson assembly, for instances. In other words, every single one of us was qualified to perform experiments in the project ahead of the beginning of our lab. To further guarantee the quality and safety of our lab, grade-elevens and students who have already participated once in iGEM were made sure to be side by side with relatively new members in the field of biology labs.
We are also cautious in physical biosecurity. Ethanol on gloves are dry before lighting the alcohol lamp, rubber gloves and plastic gloves are both employed when heating with microwave is required, and hands are cleaned before eating or drinking—outside the laboratory. To prevent releases, we put all the waste in the lab bin so that it could be sterilized later before being thrown away.
Furthermore, all of us were asked to read the Safety section on the website of iGEM carefully, so we are fully aware of potential issues needed to pay attention to.

In the lab

Undoubtedly, there are potential dangers to the human body and the environment in our experiments. If our organisms escape into the environment, the following water contamination will cause diarrhea or other sorts of ailments to human, or dangerous-gene-leakage. Besides, if genetically engineered microorganism escapes into the community, gene pool may be contaminated, leading to mutations unpredictable, and transformation of alkylbenzene to urushiol which is hyper-sensitively reactive on human. However, despite that we have received an adequate amount of safety and security education, the professional employee in Bluepha, R&D supervisor Ms.Xiang oversees our process of experiments as additional help and protection. Also, though pathogenic E. coli may cause gastroenteritis, urinary tract infections, neonatal meningitis, and other diseases, the E. coli strain we have utilized is practiced widely in the biology field and ought to pose no harm to the human body. We have got level 1 in terms of biosafety, ranged our parts employed inside the Whitelist, and finished the check-in form for monooxygenase in Aspergillius Nidulans.