Team:Manchester/Safety
SAFETY
Our project relies on genetically modified bacteria binding to hair. Health and Safety is therefore a key building block of Cutiful; in all our project planning and lab work, safety was of the utmost importance. Explained below is how we developed Cutiful to ensure it was as safe as possible for the user, and also for us, the researchers.
Our precautions taken...
In 4 bullet points:
1.
General knowledge- of MIB’s safety measures, such as first aid kits, emergency contacts, and fire safety. We underwent two fire drills in our time at the MIB, which ingrained in us the correct responses to both the intermittent and continuous alarms.
2.
Safety: Design- we ensured that the chassis selected for Cutiful was non-pathogenic, and developed a theoretical highly redundant Kill Switch to prevent contamination and propagation outside of our desired remits.
3.
Safety: Samples- we investigated the legalities of using hair samples in the lab, and followed the guidance of the Human Tissue Act (2004, England) to ensure our work was both timely and within ethical and law boundaries.
4.
Safety: in the Lab- our instructor, Dr. Gajendar Komati Reddy, gave us a week long induction, during which he (amongst other things) highlighted the need for safe lab work, and gave us the necessary knowledge to ensure not only our personal safety, but the one of other researchers using the lab too.
Safety – sorry not sorry
Or: the place in which old proverbs meet pop culture. Also: radios, dense and obscure legalese, imprinting on Gajendar, loads of bad jokes.
Prologue: General Safety in the MIB
“Better safe than sorry!” – a parent, somewhere.
• Emergency first aid: we were informed of the locations of first aid kits on all floors.
• Emergency contacts: telephone numbers for emergency contacts were provided.
• Fire safety: we familiarised ourselves with possible fire escape routes. We also learnt the fire alarm warning system. Intermittent alarm means possible problem and one should prepare to leave. A continuous alarm signals everyone to vacate the building immediately. (We also had weekly operational alarm checks, and twice through the course of the summer did the MIB safety personnel run drills, to ensure our response and evacuation times met the required standards.)
All work was performed according to the General Safety rules in the MIB.
Act I: Safety in Design
“Like the ingredients of a witch’s broth” – Robert Frost, “Design”.
When choosing our bacteria chassis, E. coli DH5α and BL21(DE3), it was essential that they be non-pathogenic to humans, as we would not want our product to cause harm to its users. Furthermore, as our bacterial product would be theoretically used out of the lab, it was vital that the bacterial strains would not be risks to the environment.
Another reason for the selection of E. coli over other, well-established, model organisms (such as Bacillus Subtilis ) is that E. coli does not generate spores.
Although we took these measures when deciding our chassis, there was still the concern of bacteria living too long, escaping from the hair, or developing pathogenicity. Therefore, we designed two kill switch mechanisms which, had we had more time, we would have cloned into our E. coli.
Act II: Human Hair Samples
“A hairy situation indeed.” – Thomas, describing our research into the HTA (2004), just before someone brought out the tomatoes.
Through the course of our experiments, we cut our own virgin hair to obtain samples for bacterial hair-adhesion testing.
Before carrying out any experiments, we contacted Dr Tanya Aspinall, Safety and Risk Manager at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. Dr Aspinall not only helped us research the legalities of using hair as a growth scaffold for bacteria, she also provided us with a risk assessment form on which we wrote our measures to control risk. These included: correct protective wear, washing hair with ethanol (70%) upon obtention and use of rounded tip scissors for cutting hair samples.
We held concerns during the development of Cutiful that it may fall under the Human Tissue Act, a piece of legislation designed to protect any personal information which can be derived from human tissue samples used in the lab. Before using hair samples in our laboratory work, we therefore made sure that we did not need to apply for a license. Thankfully, we were spared this time exigence by Chapter 30 of the Human Tissue Act (2004, England), which states: “(2) In this Act, references to relevant material from a human body do not include— (b) hair and nail from the body of a living person.” (Human Tissue Act 2004 (c. 30, Part 3: Miscellaneous and General, General, Section 53 “Relevant Material”, paragraph 2, alinea b). In order to ensure that we abode by the text of the law, we only used samples taken directly from our own heads at the time of the experiment.
Act III: Safety in the Lab
Placeholder for Sophie's brilliantly picked quote
Before we were permitted to begin lab work, we were given the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology’s (MIB) safety induction manual which we read carefully and signed. We also underwent a short safety induction course, delivered by our instructor, Dr Gajendar Komati Reddy. He highlighted to us the necessity for safe laboratory work, a sample of his instructions can be seen below:
★ Personal protective equipment: Howie-style laboratory coats and BS EN374 compliant gloves (nitrile) were worn at all times when in the lab. Safety glasses and goggles were also worn in areas when the risk assessment required it and in experiments where they were necessary. The MIB has a one glove policy for when opening doors or operating lifts.
★ Risk Assessment and Control of substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH): for the UK every hazardous chemical has been previously assessed before as well as potential risks from work processes/machines.
★ Clear separation of bench work and data anlysis: whilst experiments were carried out in the lab. Data analysis was performed in an office area.
★ A tify work bench: At the end of every hard day of lab work, equipment/samples were tidied away and work surfaces were wiped down using ethanol (70%).
★ Storage: All bacterial cultures on agar plates were sealed using ParafilmTM and labeled with researcher name, date and strain name before storing in the cold room.
★ Do nots: use of phones, personal laptops, eating (including chewing gum), drinking or listening to music through headphones were strictly forbidden when in lab. Additionally, no applying make-up and dying hairs- that is why the hair dying experiments were performed with team members donated samples.
★ Waste disposal: Throughout the project we had a system to ensure all waste was correctly disposed...
⚬ Blue bin with lid: Microbiologically contaminated glassware
⚬ Blue bin with lid + biohazard bag: Microbiologically contaminated petri dishes, gloves, tips, etc.
⚬ Green bin: Uncontaminated glassware and plasticware.
⚬ Grey bin + tiger bin bag: Uncontaminated paper, gloves, tips, centrifuge tubes, etc.
⚬ Yellow sharps bin: Needles, scalpel blades, razor blades, ect.
⚬ Glass bin: Broken and unwanted glass.
⚬ Pipette chimneys + biohazard bag: Plastic pipettes.
★ Ultraviolet light: Every day team members worked with UV light: whether it be viewing an agarose gel or performing gel extraction. When viewing a gel, we made a note to always shut the gel imager’s door before turning the UV on and swiftly turning it off again once a photo was taken. When performing a gel extraction, the door was locked, a protective visor was worn, and any showing skin was covered over before turning on the UV light. During the cutting procedure great care was taken when using the scalpel as not to cut oneself.
★ No equipment was used at any stage without induction: Before using an item or machine the first time a training was obtained from an authorised professional.