How do you deal with toxic compounds in your project?

    Safety forms were approved on September 17 2013, by Kelly Drinkwater.

    Question 1: Since parathion and PNP used in our experiments are highly toxic chemical compounds, safety problem could not be ignored. How did we deal with these reagents? To ensure the health of experimenters, all the experiments involved toxic chemicals were required to be operated in a fume hood and use gloves and respirators. After experiments, solution of these chemicals was very diluted. Then, we add bacterium Rhodococcus sp. Strain PN1, which was selected to degrade pesticides, to the solution. Incubating about three weeks, we measured PNP concentration again and found the solution became safe to the environment.

    Question 2: Does your project include any design features to address safety risks? (For example: kill switches, auxotrophic chassis, etc.) Note that including such features is not mandatory to participate in iGEM, but many groups choose to include them.

    We designed kill switch in our project. It is expected to initiate the suicide genes when the toxic chemical PNP is low, which means the system finished it job.

    Question 3: What safety training have you received (or plan to receive in the future)? Provide a brief description, and a link to your institution’s safety training requirements, if available.

    We organized special lab training together with Prof. Yi in our college. Safty training is included in every class we took.

    Question 4: Risks to the environment, if released by design or by accident?

    We make sure that the culture containing bacterium is sterilizedby autoclave. The bactrium used in our project is of low risk to the environment and we are making every effort to minimize the possible risks.