Team:OUC-China/Safety
1. Safe project design
Being responsible for our earth and ourselves is our attitude towards every experiment. In our project, all the parts we have utilized are selected from Risk Group 1, none of which are with a Red Flag. What’s more, nonpathogenic bacteria, E.coli DH5AlphaZ1 is employed as the main chassis. As a matter of fact, when using modular riboswitch to tune the expression of genes, it is harmless for the growth of bacteria and relatively safe for industrialized applications. For the sake of environments, all the chassis organisms will be sterilized before being abandoned to prevent the genes from leaking.
2. Safe lab work
We works at a neat lab named “Lab for Microinnovation and Enterprise”, which is a BSL-2 laboratory. Before working in the lab, we are supposed to be trained, not only for the general lab safety rules, but also for the standard experimental operation avoiding unnecessary damage.
Fig.1 Our laboratory and personal safety precautions
There is no zero risk to the experimenter in any experiment, hence we are properly equipped with facilities, such as latex gloves, nitrile gloves，goggles, lab coats to protect us from biotic and abiotic hazards.
Furthermore, several operational zones are divided scientifically for special experiments like A zone where is weighing the drugs, preparing the medium and sterilizing, B zone where is the recording experimental note and organizing experimental data area, C zone where is a molecular operation area, D zone where is RNA electrophoresis and a polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis area. For us, lab safety is a hot topic and we have come up with a practical lab safety manual which normalizes our lovely lab.
Fig.3 Safety operation
Practical lab safety manual
• Routine inspections must perform between 6:30-8:00pm and 9:30-11:00pm.
• Lab cleaning must be done twice a week with disinfectant moping the floor for at least 3times.
• Well prepared experiment plans should be written before you start.
• Lab coats and gloves must be worn when conducting experiments.
• Short skirts, shorts, and open shoes must not be worn.
• If you see a colleague doing something dangerous, point it out to him or her.
• Lab coats must not be worn outside laboratories and in public areas.
• Know where safety equipment (eyewash, shower and extinguisher) is located.
• Food/drink is not allowed in laboratories where chemicals are used stored.
3. Safety Education
OUC-China has built up a WeChat public platform, a worldwide platform with billions of users for documentation, communication and popularization. To engage with the public and help them attach importance to bio-safety,we published some articles. Fortunately, all these articles are rather approachable and most of them received positive feedbacks.
