Team:XMU-China/Safety1

Researcher safety

    Every member of our XMU-China 2013 team was trained by our graduate students on exact experimental skills and some laboratory regulations, especially knowledge on safety, including theoretical and practical parts about general lab safety, biosafety and hazardous chemical spill or exposure response. What's more, every member's experiments performing was corrected by our team leader for a period of time, which improves our safety consciousness.

    In addition, every member had to read experimental protocol carefully before the experiment. When doing experiments, everyone is demanded to wear gloves to avoid contacting with poisonous chemicals.

Laboratory safety

    The materials used in our project pose no safety or health concerns to members in the laboratory. In our experiments we have only two kinds of harmful reagents, both used in SDS-PAGE:

TEMED(N,N,N',N'-Tetramethylethylenediamine): harmful to neural system

Acrylamide: strongly carcinogenic

   Considering safety for our researchers and avoiding its harm to the lab and public, some special care and notices were taken. All toxic chemicals are stored at special places separately. Procedures which demanded the protection from contaminations and toxicity are performed on a clean bench. Every toxic reagents would be put back to their original places immediately.

The listed organisms we use (or from which we use parts) are all part of the basic biosafety level 1:

These four kinds of strains are all non-virulent and are commonly used in microbiological experiments. What's more, none of the new BioBrick parts that we constructed this year raise any safety issues.

Public safety

   Considering that public panic would set off if our biological materials leaked from laboratory, we're really care for the public safety. All lab-gown and gloves should be put off before members leaving the laboratory. All biological materials and genetic samples, including materials and equipment which was physically contacted with biological samples shouldn't be carried out of laboratory without bleached by autoclave before discarded or reused. Every toxic reagents would be put back to their original places immediately. All these regulations are for the sake of avoiding biological and chemical contamination from laboratory to the public.

   What's more, any untrained person couldn't have access to our iGEM laboratory. If necessary, for example, we invited some high school students to visit our genetic engineering laboratory, these visitors should wear safety clothes which implies long pants and gloves. If biological samples, chemicals or some other kinds of biological materials should be transferred to another lab in order to continue an subsequent experiment or do some further characterization, these things were loaded in special containers. For example, once we had to analyze a SDS-PAGE gel using MALDI at Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is very far away from our campus. The samples were centrifugal tube sealed with sealing film. These could improve public safety and avoid potential damage to the general public.

Environmental safety

   We only used nonpathogenic Escherichia. Coli strains (DH5α, MG1655 ,BL21 and BL21(DE3)) as host bacterias, which all are biosafety level 1 organisms in our project. However, these Escherichia. Coli strains (DH5α, MG1655 ,BL21 and BL21(DE3)) can survive departing from the laboratory. If leaked by accident, our biobricks and genetic materials would do harm to the environment owing to the resistance of Escherichia. Coli to a certain antibiotic even three various antibotics including three different plasmids. To avoid these potential biological pollution to environment, we gathered all culture fluid and culture medium with bacterias with unified treatment ensured that none of them leaked from our laboratory through sewer and dustbin. We handled all the biological materials, wastes and equipment strictly following the BSL-1 requirements. All these things that have physical contacted with biological samples were bleached by autoclave before discarded or reused.

   In a word, we've taken safety, including researchers safety, lab safety and public safety into accounts. The rules and safety standards we've consulted are pervasive in Xiamen University as well as in China.

    Xiamen University has its own biosafety rules that are regulated by the Ministry of Environment Protection, P.R. China and our institution. We carried out our experiments and evaluated bio-safety issues in our iGEM project strictly following the Chinese Pathogenic Microbiology Laboratory.

 &nbspLink to the Nation Biosafety Office:

National Biosafety Office

 &nbspLink to the regulations:

Biosafety regulation on pathogenic microbes [2] Bio-safety Regulations, 2004, P.R. China.

    In our outreach, in other words, human practice, we designed a special prize for these high school students who were the top ten on our scoring list. These sets of cards-we called them Bio Bang-were inspired by War Within Three Kingdoms, which are very popular in China. There are abundant role-relationship and mutual promotion and restraint between every cards, just like Bong! in America. The Bio Bang is themed with synthetic biology, including genetic engineering experiments, biological materials and equipment. We've also assimilate knowledge of biosafety into these set of cards in order to popularize knowledge of biosafety in lab, public and environment. One example of them related to biosafety are shown as follows:

    Every undergraduate and graduate in College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in Xiamen University will learn a story about "C3H3" which is advocated by Prof. Jiaxi Lu, a famous Chinese quantum chemist when he or she come into our college on the first day. "C3H3" consists of three words, Clear Head, Clever Hand and Clean Habit. We think it is very useful when we do synthetic biological experiments, let alone talking about safety in genetic engineering.

    Firstly, before doing a genetic engineering experiment, you should keep your head clear. Concretely speaking, you need to find out the safety level of biological materials used in your experiment, including microorganisms, reagents and your constructed gene circuits. Many biochemical reagents, such as amanitin and ethidium bromide. Keep every tiny experimental detail in your mind. This can help you avoid many potential safety hazard in your experiment.

    In addition, to make your hands clever means performing a experiment skillfully. For example, when making a gel for SDS-PAGE, it is necessary to use acrylamide, which has strong carcinogenicity. So you have to pay much attention when mixing it and pouring the mixture into a mold to agglomerate.

    The last but not the least important, a clean habit is totally useful not only in your lab but also in your life. Imaging a mass, a dirty and disorder lab, maybe some tattered glove or broken flasks which has been contacted with highly toxic reagents are hidden below the experiment rig. Many risks would arise if there's unclean experimental habit. A clean habit is more than a combination of clear head and clever hand. It's a kind of decorous attitude to your experiments and a neat working atmosphere you create by yourself. A clean and good habit can improve your whole life.

    So this is our "C3H3". We sincerely hope this proposal can improve safety in synthetic biology and genetic engineering.

    Furthermore, we have another reasonable suggestion that is every iGEM team should make a data table or survey results about public biosafety or laboratory safety and security of the projects. Every team can submit a survey report attached with questionnaire and analyzing data to the iGEM safety committee. More details are to be discussed.

[1] U.S Department of Health and Human Services, Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories, Fifth Edition, US Government Printing Office, 2007

[2] World Health Organization, Laboratory Biosafety Manual, Third Edition, 2004

[3] iGEM-XMU-2013's safety form is here