Corona Safety
In order to meet the national corona guidelines, the University of Hamburg introduced additional safety measures, which were regularly updated. At the beginning of each month, students received official safety instruction by the PIs. Masks had to be worn in the whole building except for the lab and at least a distance of 1.5 m to the next person had to be kept at all times. Only two people were allowed to work in the iGEM laboratory at the same time and the presence of each person had to be documented in a dedicated list. The list included the full name, date and contact details to simplify safety measures in case of COVID-19 cases.
General safety training
Safety is not just about how we conducted our practical work in the lab, but also about what that work actually comprised. With this in mind, we focused on designing a safe project that could not be misused. Prior to starting our project development phase, we invited Mirko Himmel, an expert on civil security research and in the development of strategies to assess and contain biological risks of different origin. To make sure each of our team members was aware of possible dangers we received a lecture and discussed our project with him afterwards.
GMO concerns
All projects working with GMO’s have to consider several safety aspects:
One of these aspects is the dual use of synthetic DNA circuits and the GMOs that contain them. Dual use of a synthetic DNA circuit could mean that the circuit originally intended for antibiotic production (beneficial purpose) could be manipulated to produce harmful toxins.
Another aspect is the introduction of resistance into the organism which is often used to test the successful implementation of the gene of interest. We only worked with the well established and characterised bacterial strain E. coli DH5α belonging to risk group 1 and thus classified as low risk.
Safe lab work
The experiments were conducted in a designated iGEM laboratory (biosafety level 1, BSL-1) which is provided by and under the guidance of our PI Zoya Ignatova and her laboratory. The lab is situated at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Hamburg. In order to guarantee a safe working environment, all guidelines and requirements of the German legislature were followed (GenTG [1]). Before starting the experiments in the laboratory the whole team received a safety briefing covering general lab safety, building safety and behaviour during emergency situations. We also learned to safely handle genetically modified organisms and hazardous chemicals. The work complies with the iGEM safety and security rules.
Waste management
Following measures were taken to ensure that hazardous waste was disposed of properly : Liquid waste was separated into the following categories: halogenated organic solvents, halogen-free organic solvents, inorganic alkalis, inorganic nitrated acids and inorganic nitrate-free acids. The liquid waste containers were stored under a fume hood. The solid waste was separated into carcinogenic, toxic and other waste. All genetically modified materials were collected in a closed designated bin and autoclaved before final disposal. After sorting the waste in our lab we used the universities waste management service for the appropriate disposal of our waste.
References
[1] Online source: Federal Republic of Germany, accessed 21st October 2020, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gentg/index.html
