Lab safety
Our Laboratory of Genetic Engineering and Molecular Diagnosis is located in the FEMSA Biotechnology Center of our university where most of the scientific research and academic laboratories are. Not everyone is allowed into this laboratory; there is limited entry and only by fingerprint technology access professors and members of authorized research groups are allowed in specific work schedules
As to safety concerns, our lab is provided with an eye wash fountain, a safety shower, an autoclave, two laminar flow cabinets with UV sterilization and a special delimited section for bio-hazardous waste and broken glass material. Our lab is equipped with special containers and instructions for the correct classification of waste according to its level of danger.
Regarding COVID-19 safety guidelines, workspace in the laboratory has been designed so no more than 6 people from our team perform experiments at the same time, wearing a mask at all times and after a meticulous examination of symptoms to enter the campus.
Project safety
Because our main goal consists in the development of a detection system through the usage of toehold switches within a cell-free, we designed the following safety working plan:
To perform a proof of concept of our toehold switches, instead of testing on an actual infected plant, we chose to synthesize a 156 bp long gBlock, containing a region from the 28S-18S ribosomal RNA intergenic spacer from Fusarium oxysporum, which does not confer fungal virulence or pathogenicity [1], to make a much safer approach.
Also, we only used organisms on a biosafety level 1 and did an analysis of the precautions we should take while working with them [2]:
| Chasis | Description | Risk Group | Possible risks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Escherichia coli (DH5-ɑ & BL21) | Escherichia coli is a gram-negative bacterium commonly used in research laboratories, due to its rapid growth rate, simple nutritional requirements, easy transformation, well-established genetics and genomic sequence. | Group 1 | Risk group 1 organisms do not cause any disease in humans. Lab coat and gloves are needed. |
Finally, as part of our project, our team is working along with experts of the field, developing a manual for the management of plant diseases and plagues. This will include the proper safe ways to treat the crops or for the disposal of them, as well as the management of our product and its residues.
References
- Lombard, L., Sandoval-Denis, M., Lamprecht, S. C., & Crous, P. W. (2019). Epitypification of Fusarium oxysporum–clearing the taxonomic chaos. Persoonia: Molecular Phylogeny and Evolution of Fungi, 43, 1.
- iGEM Foundation (2020). Risk Groups. https://2020.igem.org/Safety/Risk_Groups