Safety

Our team followed safety standards according to the UCSC campus regulations, and planned our project to have a safer organism to work with and safe lab practices.

Environmental Healthy and Safety Standards

All safety regulations for research at UCSC is regulated by the Environmental Health and Safety Depart (EH&S). EH&S advises the campus community of responsibilities with respect to health, safety and environmental issues; recommends appropriate corrective actions; and helps implement new health and safety programs. EH&S also acts as liaison between UCSC and various external agencies and regulatory bodies. Our actions and decisions have the potential for high visibility and serious consequences to the campus and the community.EH&S programs include a broad and complex range of disciplines including areas such as laboratory and research safety, industrial hygiene, environmental management, radiation, hazardous materials, information technology, ergonomics, biosafety and emergency management.

UCSC iGEM Safety Specifications

The general team overseer also held the responsibility of safety manager, ensuring that all student researchers upheld safety requirements of the EH&S and personal protection equipment. All students were required to take several safety classes on both general laboratory setting and specific laboratory training for other practices, such as biosafety. Our archeal organism Haloferax volcanii can easily be contained in a controlled environment. It requires a high saline environment of 18% salt water in order to grow. So is unable to thrive in surrounding environmental conditions which are freshwater and possible low saline aqueous environments. All DNA modifications to our organism would not alter its growth conditions or its ability to replicate. Due to our organism being in the archaeal domain its is unable to readily transfer DNA to a more rapidly growing organism such as Escherichia coli.