Researcher Safety in Everyday lab

Each undergraduate experiment is completed in the synthetic biology labs of Department of Biotechnology in National Chiao Tung University. The labs strictly follow all the institutional, local, and federal regulations. Prior to working in the standard level 1 facilities, all members are required to attend mandatory experimental and laboratory safety training, which provides a general understanding of primary and secondary barriers in the lab. All access of non-members is restricted by the usage of IC card. The laboratory head of biosafety is BoBo (balderdash034@gmail.com).

Biosafety Level 1 (Lowest Level)

Safe Agents

• Present minimum potential danger to laboratory workers and environment
• Rarely cause ailment in immunocompetent adults

Safe Lab

• Bench tops are waterproof and are resistant to moderate heat, organic solvents, acids, alkalis, and chemicals
• Special containment equipment: biological safety cabinet and laminar flow cabinets are used
• Not typically secluded from general building
• Passed the Yearly Laboratory Inspection

Trained Lab Personnel

• Given training on specific procedures
• Signed a commitment form to comply with the regulations
• Not typically secluded from general building
• Supervised by a trained microbiologist and several advisors

Implemented Standard Microbiology Practices

• Mechanical pipetting (not mouth pipetting)
• Safe sharps handling procedure is given
• Avoidance of splashes or aerosols
• Decontamination
  • Work surfaces when experiment is complete and regularly
  • Spills (immediately)
  • Infectious materials before disposal (autoclaving)
• Personal hygiene
  • Wash of hands after handling materials, removing gloves, and prior to leaving the laboratory.
  • Eating, drinking, smoking, and wearing contact lenses are not permitted
• Standard protective equipment is usually worn (gloves and lab coat)
  • Latex gloves are mandatory when there is a cut or rash present on hands
  • Laboratory coats are worn to prevent damaging of street clothes
  • Protective eyewear is worn when experiments might have splashes of microorganisms or other similar situations.
• Biohazard signs are posted and access to the lab is limited by IC cards

Experimental Training

Before joining the crew, the majority of our personnel have never or seldom heard of synthetic biology or iGEM. Only five senior students have isolated plasmid before, therefore a combination of hands on and lecture based training was scheduled and taught by senior researchers before granting permission to use the lab. Handouts of standard procedure were given and followed.

Laboratory Safety Course

The 2015 members of NCTU_Formosa team major in assorted fields, such as biotechnology, transportation and logistics management, nanotechnology, and applied chemistry. This diversity means that the majority are new to synthetic biology experiments. For basic safety precautions, all members participated in and passed a series of laboratory safety courses held by Environmental Protection and Safety Center http://esc.nctu.edu.tw/ . The safety module include general lab and occupation safety, biosafety in the laboratory, and general biohazard courses. These courses educated and tested participants about general biosafety principles, knowledge of proper conduct, dressage, emergency response and procedure, waste disposal, etcetera.

Unusual Experiments

For safety, we hope to have constant, stable fluorescent intensity while restricting the E. coli to the maximum. Our first safety experiment involves paraformaldehyde. Since our labs rarely use paraformaldehyde, we learnt the preparation process from the internet.

First, we have to change the paraformaldehyde powder to its aqueous form. The laboratories we used are all synthetic biology focused, not chemistry. This result in insufficient equipment and fume hood space to fit the hot plate, therefore we substituted the beakers to eppendorf and hot plate to dry heating pad. In the first trial, the eppendorf burst open and liquid flew out. Thankfully, we wore our lab coats, masks, gloves, and safety glasses. The solution to this problem was borrowing eppendorf safety clips from another professor’s laboratory and reducing the heating period. This prevented the eppendorf from fully bursting and barred the liquid from boiling.

The next stage is diluting and storing the chemical. For dilution, we allocated enough space in the fume hood, thereby reducing the risk of this experiment. The storage of the chemical is in 4˚C refrigerator, since the substance usually runs out in less than 3 days. We also discovered that the chemical is light sensitive and wrapped aluminum foil around the casing. These progressive adjustments for this untried iGEM experiment help reduce the laboratory risks for others and ourselves.

Unusual Experiments

To be honest, the definition of unusual differs from person to person therefore we decided to just go with the flow and list a couple of incidences.

Safety Issue 1
Problem: Too many people in the lab room at once causing unnecessary collisions
Solution: Make and abide to a schedule

Safety Issue 2
Problem: Added TAE instead of TBE when using TBE gel
Solution: Thoroughly wash the electrophoresis machine and properly dispose of the gel

Safety Issue 3
Problem: Suspected contamination of test tubes (walls have white rings)
Solution: Have the personnel on duty wash the test tubes first with detergent and second with distilled water.

Safety Issue 4
Problem: UV is constantly on in the laminar flow machine
Solution: UV is turned off after 30min of use to ensure safety to others as well as ourselves.