Team:UCLA/Safety

Safety

Do the biological materials used in your lab work pose risks to lab members, security, the general public, or the environment?

None of the biological materials used in our lab pose pose any sort of risk. The main biological part that we are using in this project, the mtd, does not affect any organism other than Bordetella bacteria. Furthermore, all of our work is done in-vitro, and our product is not packaged within a vector. As such, there is no chance of our materials impacting the public or the environment outside of the controlled laboratory environment.

If your project was scaled up from a lab study to a widely used industrial product, or if the knowledge and methods produced from your project became widely available, what new risks might arise?

No new risks would arise. Our project has no inherently malicious utilities.

What are your institution's biosafety guidelines?

All biological research at UCLA is overseen by the [http://map.ais.ucla.edu/portal/site/UCLA/menuitem.2bceb61fc98129c1ae13e110f848344a/?vgnextoid=c08f82df180e1110VgnVCM100000dcd76180RCRD Environment, Health, & Safety department's Biological Safety Division]. Per EH&S's requirements, Members of our team took the [http://map.ais.ucla.edu/go/1003938 Lab Safety Fundamentals Concepts] course taught by UCLA's Environment, Health, & Safety department. The course covers fire safety, chemical safety, and mitigation of hazards in the lab. We also consulted with EH&S regarding the safety implications of our project. Initially, we had planned to conduct our experiment in-vivo using the BPP-1 phage and its host, the Bordetella bacteria. However, Bordetella causes infections in humans and smaller mammals, and our lab facility was not equipped to handle such a hazard. As such, we decided to switch to a completely in-vivo approach.

In the USA, the [http://www.cdc.gov/biosafety/publications/index.htm Center for Disease Control] and the National Institutes of Health provide biosafety guidelines for the nation.

What is the BioSafety Level rating of your lab?

Our lab has a BSL rating of 2.

Does your project involve any high risk organisms?

Our project does not involve the use of any chassis organism. We only use standard strains of E. coli for the transformation/replication of our plasmid (XL-1 blue), as well as for screening purposes.

Our full safety form can be downloaded here