Revision as of 18:59, 23 September 2018

General biosafety

All of the experiments were conducted at the lab of Shenzhen University. Shenzhen University has very strict regulations on biosafety and biosecurity, which include the following four aspects: The first it about pathogeny and micro beings. The second is about the regulation about lab waste. The third is about the National standard and industry standard. The last is about the modeling organisms. for example, all the bacteria and the tips we used were autoclaved before disposal; different type of wastes have to be placed into different waste bins according to the waste classification; food，drink and open-toed shoes are not allowed in the lab. These rules and regulations can be found in The Laboratory and Equipment Department of Shenzhen University web page linked here.

Besides, all of us have received basic safety training from our biology courses. However, our instructors also used one week to make sure we have got enough theoretical knowledge. When conducting lab work, we were under the guidance of one of our advisers. They make sure that we wear lab coat and gloves, and make sure that we follow the standard operating procedure.

Our field work is conducted at Shenzhen University's field station. Shenzhen University's field station has additional regulations on safety, which include first aid kit, and safety precautions preventing mosquitos and sunburn. The first aid kit, hat, sunscream, and mosquito repellent protect us from getting sunburned or mosquito bite. And our field work is under the supervision of experience experts from the station. They make sure that we were hats, and sunscream and conduct our field work safely.

Project-specific biosafety

In our project, we work with Phyllotreta striolata, which is not on the white list. We submitted check-in form about using Phyllotreta striolata in our project, and got approved by the iGEM Safety and Security Committee. The Phyllotreta striolata we used in our experiment were collected from Shenzhen university’s field station, which is a very well managed and have strict regulations on biosafety and biosecurity.

The product of our project is siRNA/shRNA that are designed to target the genes of Phyllotreta striolata. When we design the siRNAs, we have BLASTed the siRNA sequences against human genome database to avoid the sequences that have high homologous with the sequences of human genes.