Safety

Introduction

    Safety is always the priority in anything and everything during all our experiments. Biosafety includes all safety issue that connects with our wet lab experiments. This includes general safety doing an experiment also specific safety issue that works with specific bacteria that we are using. “Hazards” is a common word used to describe a situation or substances that can cause danger to health, in other words, it’s unsafe. Even though our project does not work with diseases, explosions, or sharpened glass, injuries could have happened very easily. In the following paragraphs, we are going to introduce the major biosafety our project includes and the measurements we make. Through risk management practices, we want to ensure that during this process, not only that we successfully develop our product, but also that no individuals and team members gets injured.

General Safety

     We have a general safety lab training by our team’s instructor once we started our very first labs. After the training, we need to take a paper test and our score must be above 90% correct rate before we can start to do wet lab experiment. This whole training includes every detail and equipment that we will be using:

• We can wear earphones, but two things are a concern. First, the music noise cannot be too loud which will affect us while doing the experiment or affect others around us. Second, we cannot turn on the “noise cancellation” mode because if we were in an explosion situation and others are calling for our attention, we won’t be able to hear which is very dangerous and cause further serious injuries.
• Laboratory gloves are required to protect our hands from contracting different components.
• Laboratory cloth is required to protect our body from spilling liquid onto our cloth.
• Use soap to wash hands before and after experiments to make sure areas in and outside of the laboratory are clean.
• Keep the desk clean. This can prevent liquid from accidentally knocking off or spilling out.
• Put back everything to its original place after the experiment so next time, you are able to find the component again easily and quickly.
• Make sure to keep everything in the right temperature refrigerator so it doesn’t die or go bad and affect the experiment result.
• After using the electrophoretic contamination area, laboratory gloves must be changed because it is filthy (even though we cannot see them visually through the naked eye).
• No food or water is allowed in the laboratory area to make the space clean and to make sure no extra bacteria or organisms are grown.
• When using the centrifugal machine, if the liquid is above 30ml, the bottleneck needs to be taped to make sure that during the process, the liquid won’t be spilled out.
• When using the centrifugal machine, wait until the speed increases to the assigned speed, then leave it alone. During the process of increasing speed, if there is any abnormal noise, quickly turn off the machine.
• Wait until the autoclave has completed its work and the pressure has dropped to room atmosphere before opening it.

     During the experiment, we have mainly three aspects that we want to protect. First, we want to protect ourselves through personal protective equipment (PPE). Second, we want to protect our lab results and our project. Ensure that it’s accurate, successful and it reaches our goals. Third, we want to protect our environment. We want to avoid the misuse of biological toxins. Protect the environment by decreasing the amount of greenhouse gas created.

Practices of General Safety

Special Safety

Cyanobacteria – Special Safety Caution in Our Lab

    To achieve our aim of this project, we do need to apply special biological organism – Cyanobacteria. As we know the safety cautions is general do not cover such content, so in our own considerations we wanted to build some safety boundaries for this. The cyanobacteria we use is Synechocystis strain PCC6803, which was gifted by Professor Chen Zixi from Shenzhen University. Its entire genome was sequenced in 1996 and has been proven non-toxic, widely used in various fields. Right now, no test for cyanobacteria toxin rate is available. As we are aware of this potential hazard that could harm us, we made few approaches to address this problem with the largest extent. First, we purchase the cyanobacteria through a regular process that proves it’s safe. Second, every time we do a lab experiment, we need to wear lab coats, lab gloves, and wash our hands right after the experiment to ensure our health. Third, besides all the preventions we did, we still want to make sure it is safe to use so, during the use of the cyanobacteria in our experiments we all wear rubber gloves to avoid direct attachments.

Dispensing Cyanobacteria using a Pipette

E. Coli – Special Safety Caution in Our Lab

    In addition to our use of the Cyanobacteria, the E. Coli is also a special organism that our experiments are involved with to make gene coding alternations. The E. Coli is a much more common use in the genetic engineering field comparing to the cyanobacteria, as it is a more active and applicable use to engineer the genes. In terms of the potential health hazards, an over quantity of some kind of E. Coli intake will cause diarrhea. So, we require the experimental personnel to wear rubber gloves while doing the experiment whole time to avoid it. Nevertheless, speaking generally the E. Coli is hardly harmful for our health if they were used properly.

Setting up the Gel

    The process of setting up the Gel can be risky for the lab personnel. As always, they are required to wear their rubber gloves while accomplishing this to just make indirect attaches with the ingredients. In addition, a step of the Gel set-up required some heat, and normally we would be using the microwave. While using it, some safety cautions must take place. the flask containing the mixture should not be directly held while taking out the heated flask, a handle should involve avoiding scald or blister. Besides, many of the ingredients of the Gel is poison and can cause serious damage, they must not be an intake to human body in any circumstances.

Gel Electrophloresis

The Usage of Clean Bench

    In many of our experiments, the usage of super purgative working table is required. To make sure the experiment personnel don’t get hurt and to obtain the accuracy of the data collected from the experiments conducted in the super purgative working table, the following rules should be considered and followed.

• The super purgative working table should be installed with relatively few personnel moving around and at a distance from the door, with the aim of ensuring a relatively stable airflow in the surrounding environment of the equipment.
• After the equipment is turned on, the operator should first check whether the reading of the pressure difference indicator is normal.
• Ultraviolet lights are installed in the operating area, they must be turned off before operation until all operations are completed.
• Any object going inside the super purgative working table should be pre-disinfected using alcohol spray to maintain the stable and clean environment as previous and to avoid any possible contamination.
• The alcohol lighter inside the super purgative working table also have safety risks,
• After the operation inside the super purgative working table is done, the super purgative working table’s window should be closed by the outer handle. Turn of the illuminating light and wind, turn on the UV light to disinfect further after the use of super purgative working table.

Clean Bench

References

1. Facts about Cyanobacterial Blooms for Poison Center Professionals. (2023). https://www.cdc.gov/habs/materials/factsheet-cyanobacterial-habs.html#:~:text=No%20diagnostic%20tests%20for%20cyanotoxins%20are%20clinically%20available.,check%20for%20proteinuria%20and%20glycosuria%20%28in%20severe%20toxicity%29.
2. “E Coli (Escherichia Coli) in Microbiology: Purpose, Procedures, Interpretation.” Lab Tests Guide, 14 Sept. 2023, www.labtestsguide.com/e-coli.