Team:Nanjing-China/Safety

Biosafety is the prevention of large-scale loss of biological integrity, focusing both on ecology and human health. These prevention mechanisms include conduction of regular reviews of the biosafety in laboratory settings, as well as strict guidelines to follow. Biosafety is used to protect us from harmful incidents. High security facilities are necessary when working with Synthetic Biology as there are possibilities of bioterrorism acts or release of harmful chemicals and or organisms into the environment. A complete understanding of experimental risks associated with synthetic biology is helping to enforce the knowledge and effectiveness of biosafety.

Our Lab Environment

The laboratory of this year's Nanjing-China iGEM team locates on the first floor of the School of Life Science, Nanjing University. It is a special studio exclusively set for our team members and is mainly intended for the members of our experiment group and modeling group to carry out project-related discussions, experiments and model construction.

Our team members are discussing experiment details in our lab

Our team members take turns to take charge of the daily maintenance and cleaning. Everyone hoping to enter our lab must get through the training of experimental skills as well as safety matters. We all wear lab coats and gloves in our lab and pay great attention to our experimental materials, especially those genetically modified organisms.

Laying out our lab when first moving into it

Our Precautions

The main idea of our project this year is to combine the high-tenacity and high-strength spider silk protein with fireproof polyphosphate in an effort to find a new material with novel properties.Laboratory stored Escherichia coli strains DH 5α and Citrobacter freundii ATCC 8090 will be used as intermediate host for sub-cloning and definitive host for genetically engineering respectively.

Escherichia coli strain DH 5α and BL21 is on the White list issued by the iGEM Safety Community and Citrobacter freundii ATCC 8090 is classified as Risk Group 1 organism according to the ATCC product sheets, therefore they would pose no risks to us and our colleagues, as well as our community and the environment.

We have used imidazole, sodium dihydrogen phosphate, disodium hydrogen phosphate, mercaptoethanol, protease inhibitor mixture, EDTA, HEPES, MES, DTT and yeast extract in our poject, these chemicals might be dangerous to us. We have noticed these in advance and paid attention to prevent from being hurt.

The engineered bacteria may be released into the real world. So we have strict roles with these genetically modified organisms. Everyone should wash their hands before and after lab work. The waste produced in the lab are well-categorized and disposed so that the engineered bacteria won't get into the environment.

Our laboratory are equipped with biosafety cabinet and chemical fume hood for us to do experiments involving those chemicals with potential risk. The biosafety level of our lab is low risk, which makes our team members have nearly no chance of being harmed. The risk of our project is very low, but we still take precautions. We all promise to compliance with iGEM's safety and security rules and policies.

Our Human Practices

On the afternoon of October 24, 2020,we participated in the " Genscript & Nanjing University：Synthetic Biology Discussion Salon" hosted by Genscript. At the salon, we discussed the biosafety and ethical issues related to our project with Genscript. After communication and discussion, we came to a conclusion that our project complies with safety regulations and is beneficial to the whole world and mankind.

CLICK HEREto know more about our "SAFETY FORM".