Safety

General Lab Safety

Safety has been the top priority in our lab in Bluepha Co, Ltd. Any individual who involves in experiments have gone through strict Safety Trainings, which cover aspects from general lab rules (clothing, eating, and drinking) to specific lab practice. Three research teachers Dr. Boxiang Wang, Dr. Yiming Dong, and Dr. Xuanyu Wang overses the training process and provide specific guide during experiments. To ensure the safety rules taught are tightly follow n lab, we design a penalty system which charges anyone who breaks the rule ranged from 10-200 rmb. This penalty system has successfully decreased the rate of inappropriate and false lab pratice and the money collected is used as funds for the project.
The lab we work is classified as biosafety level 1, which means that the microbes used pose little danger or even are harmless to human body. In particular, the microbes we use for the project are Escherichia coli (strain DH1 and DH5α) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (strain BY4741), which pose no harm to individuals or environment. DH1 and DH5α are lab strains which cannot survive if escape and yeast is often used in food production. Any practice involved direct exposure to chemicals or object that can potentially causes harm is treated with due caution. For example, anyone who directly touch the electrophoresis gel should wear gloves and sharp needles or blades are collected in special boxes which is then sealed to be discarded safely.

Specific Lab Safety

Biosafety in the extraction

Some microbes are not completely separated with the nepetalctol during the extraction and then escape out of lab. In order to solve this problem, we plan to treat our extract from the culture with membrane filtration and employ the kill switch design by iGEM team RDFZ.


Animal safety in hardware design

Since the problem we aim to solve (feral cats rescue) and our hardware involve direct interactions, we pay close attention to any concern regarding the safety of feral cats. At the very beginning of project, we plan to test the optimal concentration of nepetalactone as cat attractants by conducting real animal experiments. However, due to the limitations in facility and lack of qualifications, we decide to forgo the animal experiment currently.

Safety is also treated with due attention thorough the design of our hardware. The idea of our hardware has been adjusted in regard to the safety of feral cats based on the feedback we gain from experienced and professional feral cats rescue team. We install a camera in our design in order to monitor the behaviors of cats inside it for safety consideration. The concentration of neptalactone in our hardware is low enough that it will not cause any aggressive behaviors among the cats. Besides, the electronic fans and neptalactone are completely separated with the cats in our hardware to avoid any danger posed by the direct interaction between cats and these components. Though currently our hardware is made of wood which is not fire-proof, we plan to switch with it more appropriate materials to rule out all these threats.