Sterilization
In the lab, keeping a sterile environment is an essential procedure that reduces the risk of microbial transmission to avoid the contamination of both our samples and ourselves. Firstly, we ethanol the tables to kill bacteria that might be on the table. Also, we autoclave all the materials that will be used in our experiment. Finally, we tie our hair, wear gloves, and a lab coat when we are in contact with organisms, solutions, or instruments that are required to be sterile for the success of our project.
Boot Camps
Another key aspect for the safety of our team is training. We provide all of the team members with training and boot camps for them to learn lab skills. In the bootcamps we teach them about lab access and safety rules, the difference between biosafety levels, how to disinfect and sterilize materials, emergency procedures, how to manage the equipment, and lab safety. Having all this knowledge on how to stay safe in the lab will help them develop their skills to the maximum, carry out the project, and have fun knowing the boundaries!
Working with E.coli
All of the bacteria we work with is non-pathogeninc and non-contaminated so it doesn't represent any dangers for us.
Unusual problems
We had a problem with the second transformation because we found some fungus colonies on two of the plates of our transformed cells. Thankfully, we extracted cells for liquid culture before the contaminants reached the E. coli cells. To prevent this from happening again we are going to constantly clean the incubator walls and be more careful when wrapping the plates with parafilm.