Team:XMU-China/Content7

• Researcher safety
• Laboratory safety
• Public safety
• Environmental safety

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:

E. coli (K 12)	DH5a
E. coli (K 12)	MG1655
E. coli (B)	BL21
E. coli (B)	BL21 (DE3)

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.

First

By constructing robust circuits in E.coli, we want to build a gene network capable of synchronizing genetic oscillations in multiple levels. Cells can be synchronized at the colony level via quorum sensing, and a gas-phase redox will be signaling (mainly H2O2) between colonies simultaneously. Two scales of coupling ensured extremely consistent oscillations.

First

By constructing robust circuits in E.coli, we want to build a gene network capable of synchronizing genetic oscillations in multiple levels. Cells can be synchronized at the colony level via quorum sensing, and a gas-phase redox will be signaling (mainly H2O2) between colonies simultaneously. Two scales of coupling ensured extremely consistent oscillations.

First

By constructing robust circuits in E.coli, we want to build a gene network capable of synchronizing genetic oscillations in multiple levels. Cells can be synchronized at the colony level via quorum sensing, and a gas-phase redox will be signaling (mainly H2O2) between colonies simultaneously. Two scales of coupling ensured extremely consistent oscillations.