Difference between revisions of "Team:SCUT-China A/Safety"

This year, our project focus on how to construct a system in E.coli, and use it to bio-desulfurization. Here we are going to tell something about safety control, which is important in our mind.

This year we designed a system to remove the sulfur contained thiophene compound in crude oil, which cannot be removed by traditional ways.

Compared with tradition ways, our project is more complementary, rather than alternative. We are committed to solving the problems that cannot be solved by traditional ways. We cannot deny the advantages of the traditional way, but at the same time, we also found it has obvious defects. So we hope that if we combine our bio-desulfurization with traditional ways, it can make great progress.

Our products are mainly used in oil refinery factories. It can be used as a step to join the existing industrial processes. With this step, sulfur in crude oil will be greatly reduced. Our engineered bacteria will not harm humans/animals/plants, and the main working environment of the strains is the factory, so with strictly controlling the equipment and feeding process, it is safe for workers and factory.

According to the requirements of iGEM policy, in our daily bench work we never performed any dangerous experiments or faced any unusual safety issues. Our bench work followed some basic regulations as below:

     1.Duplicating a key to the laboratory without permission is strictly prohibited.

     2.Experiment participants need to understand the experiment completely.

     3.Wear rubber gloves in all experimenters.

     4.Necessary steps should be performed in bio-safety cabinet.

     5.Fire, electric heaters, microwave oven should not be left while being used.

     6.Sterilize all liquid waste and solid waste containing living organism.

     7.Sterilize the lab using UV-light every week.

     8.The last person to leave the lab should make sure that water, electricity, gas, and air         conditioner has been closed, and doors and windows has been locked before leaving.

As mentioned above, our DNA parts are absolutely safe because they encode the proteins such as enzyme A, B, C and D. The DNA parts are safely contained within PCR tubes as Parts registry requires.