Difference between revisions of "Team:UC Davis/Safety"

In the Laboratory
At the beginning of summer everyone on our team took the online UC Fundamentals of Laboratory Safety course. This course described correct use of personal protective equipment and engineering safety controls within the lab to reduce risks associated with each lab space. The course also covered methods involved in chemical safety including the identification of chemical hazards through the use of Material Safety and Data Sheets (MSDS) and pictograms as well as proper chemical storage and disposal. In addition to this general safety course, we were also trained on the laboratory specific hazards by the lab managers of the three spaces that we worked in.

Since our project involved use of some proteins found in known pathogens, we decided to synthesize the genes we were interested in through IDT to express in laboratory E. coli. These safety precautions ensured that we 1. did not culture pathogenic organisms in the laboratory and 2. the proteins we expressed were not toxic or pathogenic. To ensure that our engineered strains did not exit the lab, we killed all of our cultures with 10% (v/v) bleach before disposal. We also did not transport any engineered strains outside of the lab, reducing the risk of release.

Our project involved the use of an array of small molecules. To ensure safety, we followed recommendations in the MSDS for each of the chemicals that we used. When ordering our library of alternate FabI substrates, we made sure not to order chemicals that were acutely toxic. For the chemicals we tested, we followed the MSDS recommendations for proper use of personal protective equipment including, wearing eye protection, lab coats, and wearing rubbing gloves, and engineering controls such as a working in the fume hood to eliminate the risk of chemical exposure.

Since the inhibitor we are detecting, triclosan, is toxic, we created a triclosan waste container to avoid dumping triclosan down the drain. The proper way to dispose of this container is to give it to UC Davis’s Environmental Health and Safety Services