Lab Safety
During the year, our team worked on various laboratories of the University of São Paulo. More specifically, we worked on the Biochemical-Pharmaceutical Technologies Department of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Biochemistry Department of the Chemistry Institute, and the Microbiology Department of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences. All labs were certified Biosafety Level 1 (BSL1) and adhered to all the safety norms set by the University, the Institutes, and CTNBio, Brazil’s national biosafety and biosecurity committee. Prior to the start of the project, all members of the team received the proper safety trainings in biosafety, use and discard of chemical substances, and biocontainment and discard of biological samples. Furthermore, all experiments were performed under the supervision of a more experienced researcher, such as our Instructor, Advisor, PI, or a more experienced member of the lab. During the course of our project, we only worked with DH5α E. coli (with the appropriate safety protocols), and we have not worked with any hazardous DNA part or parts coming from pathogenic species.
For our Integrated Human Practices, the high school seniors also received all the safety trainings we did, and also were instructed at length in molecular cloning before beginning to perform their experiments. All the experiments they performed were always directly overseen by at least 2 team members.
AHL Disposal
Following the example of the 2016 Arizona State team, we were very concerned about proper AHL disposal and discard. Improperly discarded AHLs are unlikely to be degraded naturally, and may accidently cause a surge of pathogenic bacteria by interfering with their natural quorum sensing systems. With that in mind, we carefully followed the safe discard protocols designed by the Arizona State team (available in their wiki), based on the work of Borchardt et al, 2001[1], which consited of bleaching the samples for 15 minutes before discard and autoclaving them.
References: [1] Borchardt, S. A., E. J. Allain, J. J. Michels, G. W. Stearns, R. F. Kelly, and W. F. Mccoy. "Reaction of Acylated Homoserine Lactone Bacterial Signaling Molecules with Oxidized Halogen Antimicrobials." Applied and Environmental Microbiology 67.7 (2001): 3174-179. DOI: 10.1128/AEM.67.7.3174-3179.2001
Sample shipment
Despite Brazilian regulations for shipment of biological samples still being very outdated and unclear on many aspects, we were still able to adhere to all of iGEM’s Safety standards for submitting our DNA samples. We also complied with the regulations and protocols set by IATA’s Dangerous Goods Regulation (DGR), and declared our package to Brazil’s National Sanitary Surveillance Agency, ANVISA.