Safety Checklist

• Read about Safe Project Design, Safe Lab Work, and Safe Shipment
• Notice the few hard-and-fast rules we have: don't use organisms from Risk Group 3 or 4, and don't release our project into the wild
• Know our local guidelines: talk to our team instructors and our institution's biosafety officers
• Ask for help: email safety (at) igem (dot) org, or join the iGEM team for Virtual Open Office Hours

Safe Organisms

We use two kinds of organisms, Escherichia coli and Caenorhabditis elegans in our experiments. E.coli is categorized as a Risk Group 1 organism ^[1] while C.elegans is on the whitelist ^[2]. According to the official iGEM description, “Risk Group 1 organisms do not cause disease in healthy adult humans.” and organisms on the whitelist “do not cause any threat to the environment”. To make sure that everything is safe enough to use, we have always been talking to our lab technician, Mr. Ho xx, about the proper usage, storage and disposal methods.

Safe Project Design

Safety is always our first priority when carrying out the program. Although the only species we use is E.coli and C.elegans, which are only organisms which do not cause harm to human when used properly, we believe that there is still a danger when our bacteria is released into the public environment, especially to children and elderlies. For example, it may cause bacteria to develop antibiotics resistance and make more diseases incurable ^[3]. Therefore, we make sure that no bacteria or organism carrying our modified genes will be released out of the laboratory. To achieve this, the bacteria will always remain inside the laboratory; we always bring worms into the laboratory but not our bacteria outside the laboratory into the public environment. While doing any experiment with e.coli, we ensure the bacteria do not expose to the environment by setting up a sterile space using a Bunsen burner and working in the heated area. Also to keep the bacteria away from the open environment, we seal every used petri dishes with parafilm before long term storage.

Safe Lab Work

Besides of ensuring a safe project design, we are solicitous about our biosafety and general safety in our lab work. All secondary schools use biology laboratories with biosafety level 1 ^[4]. We also believe that safe lab practices are important, so we emphasize safety through maintaining a high level of personal hygiene and apply good microbiology techniques ^[5]. We wear lab coats and gloves while doing any experiment and wash our hands with soap before leaving the laboratory. To prevent any bacteria being left on the bench after experiments, we always use alcohol to wipe the bench thoroughly before we leave. (While doing any experiment with e.coli, we ensure the bacteria do not expose to the environment by setting up a sterile space using a Bunsen burner and working in the heated area. Also to keep the bacteria away from the open environment, we seal every used petri dishes with parafilm before long term storage.) We received safety training when joining the team, topics include risk assessment, general precautions, fire precautions, handling chemical spills, disposal of chemical wastes and experiments on biotechnology. Details of the training can be found in here. which we follow to the letter.

Other Safety Concerns

Some steps of our experiments require the use of UV light, whereupon exposure to UV radiation may result in sunburn, pigmentation of skin and slight discomfort ^[7]. To ensure our safety, we make sure that any parts of our body won’t be directly exposed to UV radiation; we will place a UV filter board ^[8] between us and the source of UV radiation so that it will be blocked from us.

Reference

[1]: iGEM. (2016). Safety/Risk Groups. Available: https://2016.igem.org/Safety/Risk_Groups. Last accessed 26th Aug 2016.

[2]: iGEM. (2016). Safety/White List. Available: https://2016.igem.org/Safety/White_List. Last accessed 26th Aug 2016.

[3]: University of Minnesota. (2003). Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). Available: http://enhs.umn.edu/current/5103/gm/harmful.html. Last accessed 26th Aug 2016.

[4]: World Health Organisation (2004). Laboratory Biosafety Manual. 3rd ed. Geneva: World Health Organisation. p2-3,9-19.

[5]: World Health Organisation (2004). Laboratory Biosafety Manual. 3rd ed. Geneva: World Health Organisation. P69-93.

[6]: World Health Organisation (2004). Laboratory Biosafety Manual. 3rd ed. Geneva: World Health Organisation. P94-95.

[7]: Paolo Vecchia, Maila Hietanen, Bruce E. Stuck Emilie van Deventer, Shengli Niu (2007). Protecting Workers from Ultraviolet Radiation. Germany: International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. P17-28.

[8]: Paolo Vecchia, Maila Hietanen, Bruce E. Stuck Emilie van Deventer, Shengli Niu (2007). Protecting Workers from Ultraviolet Radiation. Germany: International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. p65.