Difference between revisions of "Team:Peking/Safety"

Choosing a non-pathogenic chassis

In our project, E.coli (lab strains that are non-pathogenic) was the only chassis when we performed the molecular cloning and protein expression. All the other experiments including protein purification and bioluminescence measurement were carried out in vitro.

Choosing parts that will not harm humans/animals/plants

Harmful parts are not allowed in our project. The parts in our project are most commonly used luciferase and dCas9 proteins, so none of our parts would raise any safety issue according to the current professional knowledge.

Substituting safer materials for dangerous materials in a proof-of-concept experiment

The original intention of our project is to develop a set of fast and convenient disease detectors, in order to prove the usefulness of our project, we did a series of experiments using absolutely safe genomic DNA of M. tuberculosis H37Rv as an example (the genomic DNA was prepared and offered by professional researchers in Chinese Academy of Sciences); we didn’t make any contact with the living or dead cells of this bacterium. Considering the safety issue, we did no more experiments using any materials from any other pathogenic bacteria.

Safe Lab Work

According to the requirements of iGEM policy, in our daily bench work we never performed any dangerous experiments or faced any unusual safety issues. Our bench work followed some basic regulations as below:

• Fitting a key to the laboratory without permission is strictly prohibited.
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• Experiment participants need to understand the experiment completely. For example, before certain chemicals are used, the participants must understand its physical/chemical properties and toxicity.
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• Wear rubber gloves in all experimenters.
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• Some necessary steps should be performed in bio-safety cabinet.
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• Fire, electric heaters, microwave oven should not be used without anyone beside.
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• Sterilize all liquid waste and solid waste containing living organism.
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• Sterilize the lab using UV-light every week.
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• The last person to leave the lab should make water, electricity, gas, air conditioner has been closed and doors and Windows has been locked before leaving.

For the proof-of principle test, we used absolutely safe genomic DNA isolated from B. subtilis and M. tuberculosis H37Rvas (Bio-safety Level 3). The genomic DNA of MTB H37Rv was prepared and offered by professional researchers in Chinese Academy of Sciences. What we did only was to use the genomic DNA for proof-of-principle test in Bio-safety Level 2 iGEM lab, which means that we never made any contact with the living or dead H37Rv bacterial cells.