Safety

Note: Do not do this at the lab or home

Safety is always an important concern in any synthetic biology project. In most countries there are strict laws and regulations in regards to development and handling of genetically engineered organisms. These are in place to prevent the cause of harm to people or the environment. It is vital that any iGEM team not put itself or others at any risk through its work.

The Hardware track has fewer associated safety risks than would be found in a purely biological project. In fact, our project involved significantly fewer transformations and less handling of biological materials than a typical iGEM project. The small amount that was carried out is routine and standard wetlab safety procedures werefollowed. We considered any possible risks that our project could pose regardless and adopted a number of practices in order to minimise these.

The nature of our project makes it inherently impossible for anyone, even with malicious intentions, to cause harm to others or the environment.

Safety concerns in our project

Microscopy is a now well-established field, dating back hundreds of years. The techniques we used are fairly routine in the field and so present minimal safety concerns.

Lighting safety

Some fluorescent compounds require UV light in order to excite them. Some frequencies of UV light can be potentially harmful to the eyes and skin if not used with caution. In the project only near-UV LEDs are used, which emit light at 395nm and are considered safe. This is much higher than the range of 260-270nm [1], which is considered most harmful to humans. Regardless, all LEDs in the final design of OpenScope are contained within the epi-cube casing and so the user should not come into contact with any direct light.

Electrical safety

Some components of OpenScope, such as motors and lighting, are electrically powered. The electricity supply used to power the microscope is no higher than 12V DC, which is a very safe low voltage, which can at worst only cause minimal discomfort. Wiring instructions provided on the wiki are clear and simple, and should avoid even these risks.

Biosafety

TThe biological side of our project involves standard, routine transformations with fluorescent proteins. For testing of some of our equipment pre-transformed, GFP-expressing Marchantia polymorpha was provided to us. However, as part of our collaboration with the William and Mary iGEM team, we carried out transformations of E.coli. We did this following the same protocol as them and following standard safety procedures. For more information see our Collaborations Page.

Glass Cutting

Glass cutting was carried out to adapt the shape of dichroic mirrors to fit within the microscope’s epi-cube. It was necessary to take care to ensure that small fragments of glass did not come into contact with eyes or skin. To minimise these risks glass cutting was carried out on a large tray, preventing stray glass fragments being left around the lab. Safety glasses, two pairs of gloves and a lab coat were worn at all times when cutting glass. Risk assessments were completed for the activity and students were supervised by the first-aider on hand. These can be found below (note: signatures were removed from the forms for privacy reasons).

How secure is our lab?

Our work took place in the Teaching Lab, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge. The lab is GM certified and so is designed with safety precautions in place for working with genetically modified organisms. It is not possible to open the windows in the lab, ensuring that no organism can escape. The lab is also biosafety level 1 certified.

What safety practices have we adopted?

Safety was a high priority when selecting a project to work on. Due to safety concerns several project ideas were discarded during brainstorming. Before carrying out any lab work we were given an extensive safety briefing and lab induction by the departmental safety officer.

Standard laboratory procedures were followed at all times. Correct equipment was worn when doing any wet lab work. Cleaning and disposal of equipment was carried out appropriately by considering the hazard level associated. All relevant laws and regulations regarding biosafety were followed.

Outreach day

The team hosted an Outreach day on the 11th of September for secondary school students from Cambridge and the surrounding area. A total of 18 students, supervised by their teachers, were invited to participate in two workshops organised by the team. For more information on the Outreach day, visit our Outreach Page. We completed risk assessments for all activities and supervised the students at all times. These can be found below (note: signatures were removed from the forms for privacy reasons).

References

[1] International program on chemical safety, “Environmental health criteria 160 - Ultraviolet radiation,” World Health Organization 1994, http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc160.htm.