General Safety

Probably one of the most important points in every laboratory is safety. For this reason the University established rules for every person working in the lab. Food and cosmetics are forbidden in the lab with no excuse. We put on a Lab coat when we enter the laboratory and wash our hands to be sure we do not bring any contaminations from the outside to the lab. When working with living organisms we wear gloves and when we work with harmful material we also wear safety goggles. When we are working with ethidium bromide we have to move to a special room and wear nitrile gloves. It is also important that no equipment, which is contaminated with ethidium bromide, leaves this room. While working with hot materials we wear special heatproof gloves. When we use any new equipment we ask a more experienced researcher to give us an introduction. Sometimes Bunsen burners are not enough to protect delicate material from contamination. For this materials we use the lamina flow hoods. And for sure we wash our hands each time we leave the lab but this should go without saying.

Safe Project Design

We are using two antitoxin/toxin systems (ccdA-ccdB & maze-mazF) in our experiments. For this reason our designed plasmid causes a lot of stress to E.coli. We figured out that the cells do everything to destroy the plasmid. There might be no selection advantage in nature. Furthermore, we used E.coli XL1 strain for all our experiments.

Safe Lab Work

Beside the general “good laboratory practice” no further measures were needed.

Safe Shipment

Like our last years team we sent our BioBricks with the standard process, required by iGEM. Additionally we sent our ccdB plasmid to the university of Concordia on a steril filter paper, according to Rosman, Miller. Improved method for plasmid shipment. Biotechniques. 1990 May;8(5):509. Thanks to this method we didn’t have to send a living organism.