Team:MIT/Safety

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Safety

Safe Project Design

In our project we are using HEK293 Cells which are a well documented line of cells that the team has been trained to handle properly. We are also using Streptococcus Mutans UA159, which is a strain of bacteria that is commonly found in the mouth. This strain of bacteria poses little to no threat to those that it could come in contact with unless they are immunocompromised. We also are not changing the S.Mutans’ DNA in any way to give them antibiotic resistance due to the chance that it could get out of the lab and cause harm to the environment.

Safe Lab Work

In our lab we consistently used proper PPE depending on what materials we were working with. Every team member was also required to go through lab specific trainings to be allowed to work with anything in the lab, and some of the team members were trained separately to deal with the s.mutans in the lab. While using the S.mutans we had a different set of procedures due to the bacteria’s vulnerability to contamination. This made it so that we used multiple sets of gloves during our experiments and also used a bunsen burner to decrease the likelihood of contamination.