Team:BIT-China/Safety

Safety

         Every member of our team has been trained about general lab safety and project design safety by previous members. Our research group has set up an exam for laboratory safety, only after passing which can we enter the laboratory for experimentation.

Project Design Safety

         For the safety of our team members, we designed the project to be as safe as possible. The core of our project is to design a genetic circuit to express human taste receptors heterologously in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and the intensity of fluorescences would quantitively reflect the respective taste degree of food samples.

         There are mature solutions to deal with commonly used Saccharomyces cerevisiae, since it is widely used in biological experiments. On top of that, we have trained the team members on the experimental precautions of biological inoculation, making sure nothing is wrong.

         Furthermore, we develop a series of soybean-based creative food seasonings and a Flavor Card Website to help people discover their favorite taste. Creative food seasoning is the product of enzymatic hydrolysis of soybean protein. The raw materials and enzymes are all products that meet the national safety standards and can be purchased directly. There are no organisms used in the enzymolysis process, so our seasoning is completely safe and edible.

         Through communication with Beijing Liu Bi Ju Food Co.,Ltd, we have gained a better understanding of the food safety system. In addition, we have a joint plan with the BUCT-China team to simulate a food safety evaluation system for food testing through modeling.

         In conclusion, our project is totally harmless to human body.

Lab Safety

         Our team conducted the research in a safety level 1 laboratory. The organisms we used, E. coli strain TOP10 and Saccharomyces cerevisiae is suitable for safety level 1 laboratory we are working in. Besides, the plasmids for transformation are not harmful for humans.

         Due to the nature of our project, contacting with microorganisms is inevitable. In order to avoid any harmful effects on any member of our team, all laboratory work was in accordance with the safety requirements for the laboratory.

         This includes, but is not limited to, the following examples:

1. Eating, drinking and smoking are prohibited in the laboratory.
2. Don’t deal with the wastes at will.
3. All experimenters must wear protective equipment such as gloves and Lab coats.
4. All equipment that come into contact with biological material (such as tips and glass glassware) must be autoclaved.
5. Store quick-burning, flammable materials in designated locations which are away from ignition sources for fire protection. To ensure a smooth evacuation, accumulated clutter in the hallway is not allowed.
6. Laboratory for experiments, seminar rooms for research and discussion, and the office used to search for information and data analysis are rigorously divided. These provisions are intended to prevent the possibility of unnecessary cross-contamination in the laboratory.

Dangerous Chemical

         We tried to avoid the use of dangerous chemicals whenever possible. We have completely banned a number of dangerous chemicals, such as ethidium bromide which had been replaced by anthocyanin for our DNA gel electrophoresis.

         At the same time, we have restricted the use of dangerous chemicals (such as acrylamide) which must be clearly placed in marked areas in the laboratory. To prevent taking wrong chemical reagents, we were also required to keep them in classified storage.