| ①The safety of lab |
Alarm bells
According to the Ministry of Education “2008-2009 General Undergraduate Colleges Laboratory Information Statistics”, there are 26479 laboratories in 1129 total regular undergraduate colleges in China, laboratory area 2 6.015 million m2. With so many laboratories, safety accidents have occured from time to time. In 2009, a university teacher of the department of chemistry mistakenly accessed CO gas into 307 lab, which should have been accessed to 211 lab. A woman doctor died because of this fault; In 2010, students and teachers of a university in northeast of China used goats without being checked in their experiments, which lead 27 students and 1 teacher were diagnosed as infected with brucellosis; In 2013, a postgraduate student named Huang Yang from Fudan University died of poisoning in Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital. According to the report of the police's investigation, a toxic chemical compound was found in the drinking water dispenser in Huang's dormitory room, and this toxic chemical compoud is taken out of a laboratory.
Ponder why
——Why do such tragedies repeat again and again?
These terrible incidents are not mere coincidences and it reminds us college students of the importance of lab-safety. Thus we studied a large number of reports and literature to analyze the causes of laboratory accidents. First of all, leaders and managers pay insufficient attention is the main reason. Second, management system and mechanism are not sound. Lacking of safety consciousness also cannot be neglected in causing safety problems. Last but not least, non-standard hardware construction is also a key reason.
reflect on our own
——What is happening to our lab?
Laboratory safety awareness is the "Achilles heel" to our lab. Too much facts tell us that most accidents are caused by negligence of researchers. Do experiments without wearing gloves or lab coats, pile up clutter at random in the laboratory, or eat pineapples in the laboratory during experimental clearances. Now ask yourself, have these phenomenon happened to you or around you on earth before?
preventive measures
——How to avoid the occurrence of laboratory accidents?
Laboratory safety issues can not be ignored. Tianjin University started the “Lab-Safety Month of Tianjin University”under the advocation of our IGEM team since 2013. A number of activities were held to enhance students’ safety awareness. Here, we launched the initiative that everyone pay more attention to laboratory safety, starting from things around us and from ourselves.
Safety Tips:
1. Always wear appropriate personal protective equipment. Feet and legs should be covered; sandals and open-toed shoes should not be worn in laboratories. Wear appropriate gloves while handling infectious or toxic materials and animals. Do not wear lab coats, gloves or other personal protective equipment outside the laboratory. Change gloves when contaminated, and dispose of used gloves with other contaminated laboratory waste.
2. Do not eat, drink, smoke, handle contact lenses, apply cosmetics, or store food for human consumption in the laboratory.
3. Wash your hands after working with potentially hazardous materials and before leaving the laboratory.
4. Follow the institutional policies regarding safe handling of sharps (i.e., needles, scalpels, pipettes, and broken glassware). Be careful with needles and syringes. Use only when alternative methods are not feasible. Syringes, needles, Pasteur pipettes, etc, should be placed in rigid, leak-proof containers (Sharps Safe) and discarded following the waste rules.
5. Take care to minimize the creation of aerosols and/or splashes.
6.Decontaminate all work surfaces before and after your experiments, and immediately after any spill or splash of potentially infectious material with an appropriate disinfectant. Clean laboratory equipment routinely, even if it is not contaminated.
7. Decontaminate all potentially infectious materials before disposal.
8. Report any incidents that may result in exposure to infectious materials to appropriate personnel (e.g., laboratory supervisor, safety officer).
9. Know where the nearest eyewash, safety shower, and fire extinguisher are located. Know how to use them.
10. Insist upon good housekeeping in your laboratory.
11. Check for insects and rodents. Keep all areas clean.
12. Secure all gas cylinders.
13. Several species of toxic substances of biological laboratory we could often see in laboratory: Tris,glycine, X-gal, β-galactosidase.
Not only we should pay more attention to laboratory safety, but also should our governments enhance management.Welcome to visit https://2012.igem.org/Team:Tianjin/Safety for more details. |
| ②The safety of synthetic biology |
International Risk Governance Council claims that the risks caused by synthetic biology include:
(1) environmental risks, such as bio-security;
(2) social risks;
(3) economic risks, such as intellectual property rights;
(4) the theoretical risks, such as natural or unnatural products. Although synthetic biology allows we human beings to respond to many aspects of challenges such as the global energy and environment, its development and application process involves different levels of security risk, which brings considerable social concern and worries.
Our survey results
To investigate the condition of synthetic biology, we made a survey on the internet. The results show that faced with safety issues of synthetic biology, 40.37% people indicate that they would follow scientific principles to support the development of synthetic biology. 55.28% people support precautionary principle, emphasizing the necessity to improve the supervision mechanism. 4.35% showed an attitude that they do not care the safety problem, they will use as long as they can be applied to life. As for whether should people take part in the supervision and management of biological technology, 78.88% people answered “Yes”, 21.12% people disagree, they hold the opinion that people are so lack of relevant biological knowledge that they cannot have a comprehensive understanding of science.
So we can see, a large number of people have the desire to monitor the safety of synthetic biology. But it’s obvious that in the management of synthetic biology, ordinary people make up too small parts now. How to solve this contradiction? Our IGEM team had a heated discussion on this issue. First of all, our government and educational institution should promote the education and publicity of synthetic biology, to make more people know what is synthetic biology and what does it do. Second, when a synthetic biology product accesses to the market, the producer must show basic principles and security of the product to the public, which should be objective, full and accurate to make the information as open and transparent as possible. Last but not least, we should establish a comprehensive regulatory framework in our society, give people the rights to supervise and manage the safety of synthetic biology.
References
[1]LIU Xiao, TANG Hongling, Synthetic biology and its safety supervision, Chemistry of Life? 2012,32(6)
[2] Li Zhihong, Research on statistical analyses and countermeasures of 100 laboratory accidents, Experimental Technology and Management 2014,31(4) |
| ③The safety of our project |
Curli fiber expressed by the bacterium Escherichia coli is a bacterial form of amyloid. Amyloid fibers are associated with a variety of disease states, including prion diseases and systemic amyloidosis. Curli fiber has a strong adhesive power,that can combine with the surface material of many organisms, including fiber mucin, laminin, plasminogen and so on. Vitro and in vivo tests showed that those bacteria? that be able to produce curli produce more virulence than bacteria that don’t produce curli, including adhesion, planting and invasion capacity of the host cell. E. Coli can produce curli fiber in its mammalian host, which may bring related inflammation like sepsis to its hosts. Luckily, the synthetic curli fiber in our project is used outside of our body, so it will not bring such safety problem. Besides, in the intact bacterium, the expression of curli requires the concerted action of several gene products. Understanding how curli are assembled may help in our understanding of pathological amyloids in human disease.
Our project could be used to make bioelectric detection, which could be applied in? the detection of some harmful substances to the environment or our body. We hope it could make great contribution to some hazardous substances’ safety problems in the near future.
References
[1]Synthetic Biologists Design ‘Living Materials’ That Build Themselves, Science28 MARCH 2014 1421.
[2]XING Yan-ping, WANG Yu, YANG Feng, LEILian-cheng, Pathogenicity of Escherichia coli Curli Fibers, Journal of Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology Vo.l 25 No. 1March, 2011.
[3]ZHU Jun, WANG Jian－Ye, ZHU Guo－Qiang, Biogenesis and Pathogenicity of Escherichia coli Curli Fibers, LETTERS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY , Vol.20 No.1 Jan.2009 |
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