Difference between revisions of "Team:Freiburg/Safety"

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<div class="content_box">
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<h2>Safety in iGEM</h2>
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<h2>Safety</h2>
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<h4>Safety instructions</h4>
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<p>Every member of our team received an instruction for general lab safety from Dr. Nicole Gensch, the official safety instructor of the BIOSS (Centre for Biological Signalling Studies). Furthermore our team received a special training for correct handling and deposal of liquid nitrogen from Dr. Johannes Kaiser the executive director of the BIOSS. Because we had to perform some of our measurements in a specialized lab at the ZBSA (Center for Biological Systems Analysis) we also received a safety instruction for their institution from Dr. Günter Roth.</p>
  
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<p>Please visit <a href="https://2015.igem.org/Safety">the main Safety page</a> to find this year's safety requirements & deadlines, and to learn about safe & responsible research in iGEM.</p>
 
  
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<p>On this page of your wiki, you should write about how you are addressing any safety issues in your project. The wiki is a place where you can <strong>go beyond the questions on the safety forms</strong>, and write about whatever safety topics are most interesting in your project. (You do not need to copy your safety forms onto this wiki page.)</p>
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<h4>Lab safety</h4>
  
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<p> In order to avoid any harmful influences to one of our preciuos team members all lab work is performed in accordance with the German regulations for lab safety (GUV-R 120, TRBA 100). This includes but is not limited to following examples:</p>
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<h4>Safe Project Design</h4>
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<p>Does your project include any safety features? Have you made certain decisions about the design to reduce risks? Write about them here! For example:</p>
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<ul>
 
<ul>
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<li>Choosing a non-pathogenic chassis</li>
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<li>Wearing personal protection equipment like lab coats, safety googles and rubber gloves if needed</li>
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<li>Choosing parts that will not harm humans / animals / plants</li>
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<li>Consuming any food or drinks in the lab area is prohibited</li>
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<li>Substituting safer materials for dangerous materials in a proof-of-concept experiment</li>
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<li>Smoking in the lab area is prohibited</li>
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<li>Including an "induced lethality" or "kill-switch" device</li>
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<li>Autoclaving all waste that came in contact with biological material</li>
 
</ul>
 
</ul>
  
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<h4>Safe Lab Work</h4>
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<h4>Minimizing risks</h4>
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<p>To further reduce the possibility of a potential dangerous situation happening to one of our team members, we designed our project to be as safe as possible.
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</p>
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<h5>Dangerous chemicals</h5>
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<p>We tried to avoid using dangerous chemicals whenever possible. For example we completely prohibited the use of ethidium bromide and used Midori Green as safer alternative to dye our DNA gels. We also restricted all use of this chemical to a small and clearly labelled area of the lab.</p>
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<h5>Biological hazards</h5>
  
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<p>What safety procedures do you use every day in the lab? Did you perform any unusual experiments, or face any unusual safety issues? Write about them here!</p>
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<p> Because of the nature of our project working with antigens derived from pathogenic organisms was unavoidable. To nevertheless ensure safe working conditions we decided to use only proteins that are not associated with the virulence or toxicity of these organisms. When such proteins were not available we used only immunogenic epitopes, not whole, functional proteins as antigens.</br>
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To further reduce the risk of biological hazards we only used harmless lab strains of E. coli (risk group 1) for cloning and expression of all of our needed proteins.
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</p>
  
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<h4>Safe Shipment</h4>
 
  
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<p>Did you face any safety problems in sending your DNA parts to the Registry? How did you solve those problems?</p>
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<h5>Working structure</h5>
  
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<p> By using a seminar room of the University of Freiburg for relaxing, meetings and all kind of organisational work we were able to reserve the lab for actual lab work. This clear cut between lab and office work helps to prevent unnecessary complications which might occur in a hectic and overcrowded lab.
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</p>
  
 
</div>
 
</div>

Revision as of 21:39, 11 September 2015

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Safety

Safety instructions

Every member of our team received an instruction for general lab safety from Dr. Nicole Gensch, the official safety instructor of the BIOSS (Centre for Biological Signalling Studies). Furthermore our team received a special training for correct handling and deposal of liquid nitrogen from Dr. Johannes Kaiser the executive director of the BIOSS. Because we had to perform some of our measurements in a specialized lab at the ZBSA (Center for Biological Systems Analysis) we also received a safety instruction for their institution from Dr. Günter Roth.

Lab safety

In order to avoid any harmful influences to one of our preciuos team members all lab work is performed in accordance with the German regulations for lab safety (GUV-R 120, TRBA 100). This includes but is not limited to following examples:

  • Wearing personal protection equipment like lab coats, safety googles and rubber gloves if needed
  • Consuming any food or drinks in the lab area is prohibited
  • Smoking in the lab area is prohibited
  • Autoclaving all waste that came in contact with biological material

Minimizing risks

To further reduce the possibility of a potential dangerous situation happening to one of our team members, we designed our project to be as safe as possible.

Dangerous chemicals

We tried to avoid using dangerous chemicals whenever possible. For example we completely prohibited the use of ethidium bromide and used Midori Green as safer alternative to dye our DNA gels. We also restricted all use of this chemical to a small and clearly labelled area of the lab.

Biological hazards

Because of the nature of our project working with antigens derived from pathogenic organisms was unavoidable. To nevertheless ensure safe working conditions we decided to use only proteins that are not associated with the virulence or toxicity of these organisms. When such proteins were not available we used only immunogenic epitopes, not whole, functional proteins as antigens.
To further reduce the risk of biological hazards we only used harmless lab strains of E. coli (risk group 1) for cloning and expression of all of our needed proteins.

Working structure

By using a seminar room of the University of Freiburg for relaxing, meetings and all kind of organisational work we were able to reserve the lab for actual lab work. This clear cut between lab and office work helps to prevent unnecessary complications which might occur in a hectic and overcrowded lab.