As part of our wetlab formation to CBS we also attend safety training sessions conducted by Caroline CLERTE.
In the lab, we followed a range of safety procedures every day to maintain the integrity of our experiments. These safety procedures are tailored to the specific experiments we conducted, which include:
No plastic gloves when working with at the flame under sterile conditions
Sorting of biological and chemical waste into appropriate containers.
Wearing of appropriate PPE, including gloves, lab coats, and safety goggles.
Work under a chemical hood when required
Directly place Diamond Nucleic Acid Dye into the electrophoresis tank to prevent contamination of the bottles.
Open doors and handle agarose gel with a single glove to prevent contamination of door handles.
Verify safety pictograms and follow established protocols.
Inactivate bacteriological waste using Virkon.
Disinfect benches using 70% ethanol.
Consult CBS members in case of safety-related doubts or questions.
Washing hands before and after the experiments.
Ensure that machines are turned off and unplugged when living the lab.
As our project already stated, we are working with mosquitoes and viruses. Viruses are highly dangereous, and we take all the necessary precaution step to assure safety. We asked a specialist from the MIVEGEC (Mr.Chritophe Paupy) to provide us mosquitoes infected with WNV.Those were deactivated using a specific lysis buffer, we also needed to complete an agreement colaboration to explain why we needed those mosquitoes, and because access is restricted for those type of organisms.