Safety

Lab Safety Requirements

Wear appropriate personal protective equipment at all times. When gloves become contaminated, replace them and dispose of used gloves with other contaminated laboratory waste into specific trash cans.
After working with potentially hazardous materials and before leaving the laboratory, wash your hands.
In the laboratory, do not eat, drink, smoke, handle contact lenses, apply cosmetics, or store food for human consumption.
Comply with the institution's sharps-handling policies (i.e., needles, scalpels, pipettes, and broken glassware).
Take precautions like wearing masks to avoid the formation of aerosols and/or splashes.
Use an appropriate disinfectant to decontaminate all work surfaces before and after your experiments, as well as immediately after any spill or splash of potentially infectious material. Even if the laboratory equipment is not contaminated, it should be cleaned on a regular basis.
Decontaminate all potentially infectious materials before disposal.
Report any incidents that may result in infectious material exposure to appropriate personnel (e.g., laboratory supervisor, safety officer).
Wear double gloves when the experimenter touches gel.
When using a centrifuge, the experimenter needs to balance the test tubes.

Our lab at ATLATL is classified as BSL-1 (Biosafety Level 1), which means that the microbes here have no risk to healthy individuals. Besides, the laboratory has been equipped with all necessary facilities to ensure immediate response to emergencies and secure our safety.
The only microbe we used in this project is a quite common and safe strain, E. coli DH5α and all the experiments were conducted under the supervision of our instructors.