Team:LINKS China/Safety
Lab Safety
Here at LINKS_China 2021, we prioritise safety as one of our main concerns. We strive to protect all of our members and surrounding environments from being exposed to any slightest danger posed by our laboratory. Our lab is graded level 1 in terms of biosafety which means that all of the materials we used impose little or no risk on individuals' health.
We protect ourselves by wearing gloves, lab coats and masks when entering the lab. We also have a set of lab rules that regulates our members not to eat or drink in lab, not to wear sandals during experiment, not to touch phones during the experiment, etc. In addition, since it is a special period of time due to the pandemic, we have measures in place to protect ourselves from COVID-19. For example, anyone entering our lab will first need to have their temperatures taken and any visitors to our lab will be recorded.
Our lab is separated into contaminated and and non-contaminated areas so experiments involving SDS-page and agarose electrophoresis will only be conducted in the contaminated area. We have special pipettes and colonial flasks that are only for the use in contaminated area. All the gloves and other disposables used in the contaminated area are collected and treated carefully. Our team members are also strictly banned to use of poisonous, heavy metals, volatile strong acids or dangerous materials in experiments. Furthermore we have some emergency equipments in case members splash dangerous chemicals into their eyes or skin.
All of our team members had the training given by our lab supervisor Boxiang Wang of how to use the lab safely before they actually start to do experiments independently. Our supervisors Boxiang Wang is professionally skilled to instruct us and is very responsible for overseeing that we perform safe lab protocols. There are always instructors in charge and we are under the supervision of them when we operate some dangerous equipments such as large centrifuges and autoclaves.
This is our PI teaching students about the safety policy of our lab.
Project Safety
The base material for our project, bacterial cellulose membrane (BCM), is produced by a Symbiotic Co-culture Of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY) of Komagataeibacter intermedius/rhaeticus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The two strains of Komagataeibacter are obtained from isolating the bacteria strains in the commercially available kombucha, which is a healthy drink. They are then identified through morphology and analysis of their genetic sequence. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a kind of yeast involved in the production of wine. Since all of the strains involved in the production of BCM are also directly used in food industry, they are proved to be harmless. In addition, all the steps involving live bacteria and yeast are done in the clean bench. The SCOBY we prepared is then sealed in the sterilised incubator without being moved until the BCM is thick enough. Then the BCM is taken out by members wearing gloves and lab coats and the waste SCOBY is treated with 84 disinfectant before being discharged.
There are two strains of Escherichia coli involved in the production of natural dye and spider silk proteins-BL21 and DH5a. Both DH5a and BL21 are common chassis used in synthetic biology and they are proved to be completely safe. In addition, all the genes used in our lab are also non-poisonous. The dye is obtained from ultrasonication and high rpm centrifugation. All the bacteria are killed and accumulated in the bottom of centrifuge tubes. The spider silk proteins are obtained through the purification which means that no live bacteria remain in our protein solution. When eventually our final products are made, there is no live bacteria remaining so it poses no harm to the environment.
We also strive to protect the safety and privacy of all the participants involved in Human Practices. All the responses of interviews and questionnaires we delivered are collected anonymously so that no private information leaks out.
Do Not Release Policy
We invite people to tour our lab but they are restricted from taking anything away with them. Visitors must wear lab coats, gloves and masks when entering the lab. Gloves and masks are sprayed by concentrated ethanol before being disposed into bins. Lab coats are reusable but they are sterilised with high temperature first. For our education and entrepreneurship this year, we mostly use videos and pictures to present our projects so no contaminated products are taken away. In addition, all the solutions containing microorganisms are collected in a specific container first and then added with 84 disinfectant (bleach) before being discharged. We also sterilise peri dishes (plates) and all other contaminated materials using high temperature and high pressure environment before disposing them therefore make sure that no live microorganisms are released from our lab.
