Team:HZAU-China/Safety

We had completed those forms:

About our lab
Safety form
Check-In Form N/A

Safety training:

In our safety training, we have learnt much. The topics about our Safety training are:

Safety requirements in the lab
Dos and don'ts when using hazardous chemicals
Dos and don'ts for using lab instruments
Possible hazards that can be caused by lab instruments and cases of accidents
Emergency treatment such as CPR

In details, our safety requirements are:

Lab-grow and gloves must be worn at all times for work in the laboratory. Personnel must wash their hands after experiments, and before they leave the laboratory working areas. Open-toed footwear must not be worn in laboratories. Eating, drinking, smoking, applying cosmetics, handling contact lenses and sleeping is prohibited in the laboratory working areas. Protective laboratory clothing that has been used in the laboratory must not be stored in the same lockers or cupboards as street clothing.

And for further attention, we have printed safety requirements and posted them on the marked place. We also list many websites and urge our teammates to study.

Biosafety guidelines:
http://swx.hzau.edu.cn/
http://bw.hzau.edu.cn/zc_detail.asp?id=196

Govern biosafety in research laboratories:
chinahttp://www.stee.agri.gov.cn/biosafety/
http://english.biosafety.gov.cn/

Biosafety guidelines of our institution:
http://swx.hzau.edu.cn/
http://bw.hzau.edu.cn/zc_detail.asp?id=196

Regulations that govern biosafety in research laboratories:
http://www.stee.agri.gov.cn/biosafety/
http://english.biosafety.gov.cn/

Organisms and Parts that we Use

Up to now, the only Organism we used are Escherichia. coli (Stbl3,DH5alpha,BL21(DE3) included).

The parts we use can all be found in our HZAU-China_Safety2014_Spreadsheet.

Risks and measures

Risks to the safety and health of team members, or other people working in the lab: The Organisms　we　use　may cause irritation to skin, eyes, and respiratory tract, may affect kidneys.　All the parts we use are iGEM official distributions. The parts we use are cre protein and fluorescent protein and so on. All these protein are within the cells. They are safe to people. We use GoldViewTM as the Nucleic Acid Gel Stain. Even there is no evidence to suggest the GoldViewTM is toxic, we set red marks to caution others. (as shown in the following picture)

Risks to the environment:

The only Organism we use is Escherichia. coli (Stbl3, DH5alpha, BL21(DE3) included). If the bacteria escape from the labs, the plasmids with antibiotics resistance gene may be transferred to other microorganism through conjugation.

Risks to security through malicious mis-use by individuals, groups, or countries:

Our organisms are no more (actually less) dangerous than wild types. However, malicious misuse may still bring danger to human or even transform them into biological weapons; but such activities are against humanity and conflict with the United Nations' Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons, therefore, it will be brought to justice by all human beings.

In order to improve the security, our lab has two access control systems to prevent unauthorized persons from entering. We get one outside our building, another one outside our lab (as shown in the following picture). And we lock our lab's door if there is no member in the lab.

Risks of increasing Random recombination rate:

It may increase random recombination rate because of the lox sites. So there is risk of out of control. Therefore, we add the riboregulator in the input module to reduce the leakage of cre expression. In the other way, we tested kinds of competent E.coli cells to find a stable strain. At last, we found that DH10B is more stable than DH5α. (You can find the details of our work in the wetlab)

References:

1. Understanding Biosecurity ; National research council of The National Academics ,Rita r. Colwell

2. Laboratory biosecurity guidance; World Health Organization, September 2006, WHO/CDS/EPR/2006.6

3. Laboratory biosafety manual, Third edition ; World Health Organization, Geneva ,2004