Team:UFMG Brazil/Safety

Before starting any experiment...

... we were kindly training by a biosafety expert, Neuza Antunes, responsible for all the training programs of biological safety and risk prevention. In our institution, we have an internal committee for accident prevention and a waste management department that seeks to properly instruct about accident prevention, emergency responses, safety practices to work with genetically modified organisms and biological risks. In our institution we use the "Biosafety Manual" of professor Mario Hiroyuki Hirata, ISBN: 9788520433164 and the guideline "Good laboratory practice" ISBN: 9788520433164.

To perform any experiment we use personal protective equipment such as lab coat, proper shoes, gloves and the collective protection equipment necessary to handle genetically modified organisms or other organisms of biological risk of type II.

Our chassis are noninfectious and non-pathogenic organisms and we are aware about all the good practices for the correct disposal of biological waste, necessary to prevent gene transfer to related species, horizontal gene transfer, direct and indirect effects on non-target organisms, development of resistance in target organisms, and effects on biodiversity.

We are aware that inherent risks of working with genetically modified organisms are possible because of the unpredicted nature of altering the DNA sequence. However, we work consciously and we seek to modify as little as possible our chassis to perform our goal.