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Team:INSA Toulouse/contenu/safety/safety in the lab
From 2013.igem.org
Safety in the Lab
Concerning our institution, safety in INSA Toulouse
INSA Toulouse is a public school, which have some laboratories used for public research. Everybody in the INSA must also follow the French work code, which legislates for respect of environment, workers and public safety. Most of the rules we have to follow are presented in the manual “Manuel de sécurité en laboratoires” (from the WHO), which permits us to know almost everything we have to know about safety with microorganisms we use and products we manipulate. In addition, daily use of Deming wheel allows us to improve the safety system and keep it updated..
Concerning the laboratory
Worker protections
As in every lab, we use conventional protection when manipulating. Every experiment has to be made with gloves and a conventional lab coat, which aimed at protecting the worker and avoiding contaminations. We also wear glasses when they are useful (UV exposition, EtBr using, hot water manipulations, chemicals manipulation…).
Waste gesture
After a formation for chemical waste gesture and biological hazard, we learn how to use different trash cabs as described in the picture. Biological wastes, potentially containing viable microorganism, are autoclaved in a special bag, then discarded by the classical way. Chemical wastes are regrouped and treated every month together with wastes of other labs of the campus.
Devices and Material
In this part, we’ll list all devices we use and how to use them safely:
- Chemical Storage We got separated and dedicated racks for every kind of chemical product we use. As you can see on these pictures, those boxes are key-closed.
- Ethydium bromure room A room is dedicated for using EtBr asthis reactant has been proved to be highly mutagenic and dangerous for user. This room is key-closed. One must wear gloves, glasses and lab coat to enter in. Two special boxes are available to discardspoiled EtBr.
- Biological safety cabinet To avoid external contamination and limit exposure to biological material, we use a Biological safety cabinet (FASTER – Ultrasafe) which is controlled every year. It works according to the principle of laminar flux circulation and filter, in such a way microorganisms are stuck into the cabinet, and external contaminations are impossible. This cabinet is cleaned-up every morning when we arrive and every evening when we leave.
- Electric burner For all manipulations, we also use electric burners, which are as efficient as Bunsen burners (even more), but much more safe than them (this way we limit fire hazards).
- Fume Cupboards To protect the user from volatile chemical compounds while dangerous manipulations, we dispose of two Fume cupboards.
- Water-bathes Use of water-bathes can be dangerous, with exposition of boiling or hot water. We also use special gloves protecting us from projections and steam. The use of water-bathes implies of course wearing glasses and lab coat.
- P2 Laboratory Special care have been taken to manipulate the Chromobacterium violaceum strain which is classified as a class 2 microorganism.
Concerning E. calculus and project
Would E. calculus raise safety issues in terms of:
- Researcher safety? In this project, we are working with biosafety level 1 microorganism (according to World Health Organization (WHO) (Laboratory Biosafety Manual) with Escherichia coli DH5α and DH5-1 strains, which are considered as biologically safe for users. Some of chemical compounds used could be dangerous for health (EtBr, Phenolchloroform…), but as previously described, all precautions are taken to ensure security and safety for all users.
- Public safety?
As described in the overview, E. calculus should not go out of the lab. Interactions with human body are not envisaged and public should also never be in contact with our modified organism. Every manipulations we proceed are made under great control, in an enclose environment. Each modification we apply to our strains should not be threatening for biodiversity and external organisms. Furthermore, our strains are engineered and should not be able to survive in an external environment.
If a direct application is find for E. calculus (or just for logic gates we create and test), it will be generally a part of a process in closed reactors, or in controlled environment. We also believe that our system is really safe and could never be an issue for public safety. - Environmental safety? E. calculusE. calculus should also not be disseminated in the environmentOf course, avoiding contaminations and spreading implies a good gesture of biological waste (see the part above “waste gesture”). Furthermore, use of special strain permits us to be sure that none of our modified organisms are spread out in the wild.
Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?
The only safety issue we can associate with our new Biobricks is researcher exposure to microorganism when testing the parts, but as mentioned earlier, all precautions are respected to avoid any problem. Our parts are also tested in different contexts, to assure their full functionality and safety whenever another team wants to use them.
Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?
Our institute disposes of one person who is responsible t for security and safety in the lab, but we do not have any group or committee concerning biosafety in general. However, we possess review boards we can consult any time to answer our question about biosafety. In addition, biosafety was evaluated by the security laboratory officer who approved the project.
Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?
Our team does not have any local biosafety group or committee, information and documentation about biosafety and condition of application were pretty hard to find. However, we have the luck to work in a laboratory which already got all equipments and protocols to ensure a great Biosafety. It could be a good improvement for future iGEM competitions if iGEM staff could provide us way to ensure that safety is good enough to take part to the competition, like a “safety check-list”, or by putting some “limitations” about the manipulations, telling us what is dangerous or forbidden. (forbidden strains, forbidden modifications, dangerous and “key” manipulations…).
We also focused on the 2012 Paris-Bettencourt iGEM project, named ““Bware”, which proposes multiple ways to ensure that new synthetic constructions could never be an issue for health or environment, even if the strain is unfortunately released on the wild. For us, work of team Bettencourt is really important and should potentially be integrated on future iGEM standards and rules.
