The "Lab-Safety Month of Tianjin University"

Figure 1. The "Lab-Safety Month of Tianjin University"

Under our advocation, Tianjin University started the " Lab-Safety Month of Tianjin University", and a number of activities were held, in which our iGEM team played important roles.

The" Lab-Safety Month of Tianjin University" campaign was a successful safe work practice, and we hope that we can seize this opportunity to take the initiative to start the lab-safety campaign among the universities in Tianjin city.

This campaign was the first specific campain focusing on lab-safety in China, and was composed of various activities such as lab-safety lectures, lab escape drills, lab-safety checks, top 10 safe labs selection and filming videos about lab-safety. Our iGEM team was responsible for organizing and propagating some of the activities.

Tianjin University made and revised three regulations in Dec, 2012-Tianjin University Lab Management Regulation, Tianjin University Lab-Safety Management Regulation and Tianjin University Lab-Safety Responsibility Regulation. These regulations perfected the regulations related with lab-safety, and helped to build up the lab management system of Tianjin University. Teachers from Tianjin University are now compiling a book named Basic Knowledge of Lab-Safety for College Students. To regulate the use of chemicals in our unversity, an Integrated Management System of Chemicals is also developed. For students whose majors are related with chemicals, they have to be trained about safety rules. Only after passing an lab entrance examination can they enter the labs for studying and working. Besides, postgraduates are equipped with special protection equipments to ensure their personal safety.

Plague Inc Competition

Figure 2. Plague Inc Competition

To help students enjoy themselves while learning knowledge about safety, we held a Plague Inc Competition after studying and discussion. This game required participants to spread viruses around the world to make human beings die of terrible epidemics. In the process of virus transmission and infection, players need to strengthen their infectivity and resistance against antibiotics. Many students showed great enthusiasm to this game, and took part in our competition, two of whom are awarded with prizes.

This competition enabled students to enhance their awareness of safety before conducting research work. It also tested their ability of making strategies and overcoming difficulties, which also helped them to implement their research plans efficiently.

The 3M Lecture

Figure 3. The 3M lecture

We also invited a professional lecturer Mr. Wang Enye from 3M to give us a lecture on Lab hazards and Self Protection. In the lecture, he talked about 4 aspects:basic knowledge about lab hazards and self protection, recognition of lab hazards and risk control, Respiratory hazards and self protection, and eye,face,skin hazards and self protection. The lecturer encapsulated the important technical fundaments of laboratory safety.The emphasis on the fundamentals will help the student and practicing scientist to understand the concepts and apply then accordingly. Some of the lab management officials and student representatives of related departments attended the lecture.

Regulation and Education

Tianjin University made and revised three regulations in Dec, 2012-Tianjin University Lab Management Regulation, Tianjin University Lab-Safety Management Regulation and Tianjin University Lab-Safety Responsibility Regulation. These regulations perfected the regulations related with lab-safety, and helped to build up the lab management system of Tianjin University. Teachers from Tianjin University are now compiling a book named Basic Knowledge of Lab-Safety for College Students. To regulate the use of chemicals in our unversity, an Integrated Management System of Chemicals is also developed. For students whose majors are related with chemicals, they have to be trained about safety rules. Only after passing an lab entrance examination can they enter the labs for studying and working. Besides, postgraduates are equipped with special protection equipments to ensure their personal safety.

Other Activities

This campaign was the first specific campain focusing on lab-safety in China, and was composed of various activities such as lab-safety lectures, lab escape drills, lab-safety checks top 10 safe labs selection and filming videos about lab-safety. Our iGEM team was responsible of organizing and propagating some of the activities.

Safety Procedures From Tianjin University

1.Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues in terms of:

a. Risks to the safety and health of team members or others working in the lab?

No, there are no safe threats towards our team members. Our working environment is under BSL-1 level and experimental materials we used strictly follow the safety rules of this level. The potential risks are eliminated by using standard, well-characterized bio-materials.

The strains we used for genetic operation (E coli.DH5a; E coli.TransT1) are not pathogenicity and remain so after engineering. The members of the team have received and passed the lab training of the standard safety protocols.

b. Risks to the safety and health of the general public, if released by design or by accident?

Our engineered strains are non-pathogenicity and unable to wildly spread. The function of them is producing oil fuel which is pervasively used in daily life. The only potential risk is the introduction of the antibiotic resistances to wild strains. We adopt rigorous procedure of sterilization to eradicate the possibilities of synthetic gene leaking into the environment. Biohazard wastes are also disposed properly.

c. Risks to the environment, if released by design or by accident?

No. Our engineered bacteria produce oil fuel only under controllable, idealized environment created artificially, in which the amount of product of our cells still won't be significant enough to pose a threat of environmental pollution. Due to its poor adaptability, it can hardly disturb the syntaxial system of the nature.

d. Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups, or countries?

No, the strains we introduced for engineering are very common in the lab. Our final works, which produce oil, have no potential to be used for creating either biochemical weapon or ecocatastrophe.

2. Your project moved from a small-scale lab study to become widely used as a commercial/industrial product, what new risks might arise? Also, what risks might arise if the knowledge you generate or the methods you develop became widely available?

If used for large-scale alkanes production, our project would not raise any safety issues, for the organism we are using this year is Escherichia coli which is of limited danger to the environment, and we have taken safety measures to ensure that the device we make would not increase bacterial survival in the case of accidental release.

If our method of producing alkanes became widely available, it would be more friendly to the environment compared with traditional chemical methods in that we use renewable carbohydrate as raw materials and waste disposal is largely reduced. Therefore, there wouldn't be any risks to the public and the environment.

3. What safety training have you received (or plan to receive in the future)?

As a compulsive curriculum, the entire laboratory personnel have taken the class about laboratory safety before conducting an experiment. Besides, we all pass the test of our university about how to ensure the safety of laboratory. In safety training, we acquire the knowledge of how to deal with the dangerous situation, how to face the leakage of toxic reagents, how to cope with the contaminated biological materials and how to manipulate the laboratory apparatus properly.

In addition to avoiding the risk of accidents, we also learn and comply with the relevant laws and regulations in order to keep both safety and security. Through participating regular fire drills and speech about safety, security awareness of us is rising all the time.

4 .Under what biosafety provisions do you work?

This is te institution biosafety guideline: https://2012.igem.org/Team:Tianjin/Safety We have a Peiyang Biological Control Committee that scrutinize our project looking for potential dangers and offered advice about laboratory facilities for a safer environment. This help us to ensure the biosafety of our project, and we are very pleased to have this committee's supervision on our plans.