Safety

Biosafety is the prevention of exposure to biohazards or pathogen dissemination, concerning on the issues of ecology and hygiene. Human errors, unqualified instruments, poor experimental techniques would all possibly contribute to deficient safety insurance. Typical topics in biosafefy involve the regular conduction of examinations on laboratory settings and machines, a set of strict laboratory guidelines to obey, etc. Working with synthetic biology experiment, especially high-security apparatus and facilities are required to prevent harmful chemicals or engineered organisms from being released accidentally.

Following promise

Biosafety Level of Our Laboratory

With the guidance from iGEM competition and locally safety regulation, and in order to keep our members from bio risks and correspond to the regulations above, our laboratory is ranked as BSL-1. Biosafety Level 2 laboratory generally deal with applicable microorganisms without harmful pathogenic potential on healthy adults. Additionally, all of the parts and species we utilized, which are listed in the chart below, are environmentally friendly, not potentially harmful or pathogenic to healthy adult individuals. Before entering the laboratory, everyone can notice the reminders as follows:

Lab Equipment

Our lab is equipped with advanced instruments to ensure safety, including laminar flow hood, autoclaves, and personal protective equipment. We also set a trash can especially for polluted wastes.And we have a medical box contains some available medical items at any time.

Experiment operation

During the entire experiment, each member strictly followed the criteria as presented:

Fire, electric heaters and microwaves should not be left unheeded. Our lab is also well equipped with fire hydrants, fire extinguishers, and fire blankets to make sure the fire could be extinguished within a short period of time. Our safety instructor has taught everyone how to use these extinguishing equipment. We have also studied the using method of alcohol lamp and other essential safety procedures.

Bacteria should be operated in laminar flow hood to secure isolated environment
Wastes containing living organisms should be autoclaved before throwing away and sent to a certain institution for disposal
Glass apparatus should be disinfected regularly
Rubber gloves, lab coats, long pants, and shoes should be equipped to cover the entire skin when conducting experiment
Water, fire, electricity and air conditioner should be examined whenever an experiment is suspended
The laboratory should be cleaned at least once a week

Safety tutoring

Before our team members commence the experiment, we have been trained with safety issues systematically. For example, we have been taught how to use extinguishers and fire blankets; also we've learned the rules of waste cleaning and made a schedule for it. We give sincere thanks to Professor Ren from Shandong University for offering the training session.

Safety concerns of our project

Our project aims to increase the sensitivity and specificity on the testing for HCV in blood. In the future, we will request a department which is qualified with Biosafety Level 3 to test our system using HCV infected serum. If it is applicable after further evaluation, there will be a significant decrease in the possibility that patients would receive infected blood. Thus, our project will add insurance to public hygiene with higher efficiency and lower cost of HCV detection.