Team:IISER-Tirupati India/Safety

Safety

Safety is an essential component to maintain while working in the laboratory. For the very brief period our team had access to laboratory, we were extremely careful and strictly followed our Institute’s safety guidelines.
For more details visit: http://www.iisertirupati.ac.in/institute/safety.php

Care for Safety, Physical and Chemical Hazards

• It was mandatory for all team members to join the lab safety training program by IISER Tirupati which taught us how to be careful while working in the laboratory and follow the safety guidelines of the Institute’s Safety Committee.

• Personal Protective Equipments were mandatory for regular days in the laboratory wherein we wore lab coats, nitrile gloves, shoes and long trousers. We used safety goggles for handling hazardous chemicals, acids and bases.

• All students were taught to use the fire extinguisher in case of a fire alert in the laboratory.

• The laboratory is BSL-1 with laminar air based biosafety cabinets. The cabinets were wiped with 70% Ethanol prior to use everytime.

• Proper care was taken for disposal of chemical waste like Ethidium Bromide, Agarose gels, SDS gels and used HPLC solvents.

Care for Biological Hazards (Biosafety)

• All media and bacterial culture were collected in biohazard tanks and treated with 2% bleach followed by autoclaving and proper disposal.

• Non pathogenic lab strains of E. coli like BL21 and DH5α (Risk Group 1) were used for all the experiments which were bleached and autoclaved to prevent the release of our GMO into the environment.

• To maintain additional biosafety, our project design involves the use of surface exclusion genes (traS and traT) and a tightly regulated user modulated ‘kill switch’. These would help reduce the chances of Horizontal Gene Transfer and control the release of our GMO into the environment, respectively.