Safety

Before our team started working in the lab, we all completed Penn State’s EHS - Initial Laboratory & Research Safety Training. This training included:

This training taught our team the basics to conduct safe experiments in the lab.

Following the online safety training, Harry Adamson—a grad student in the lab—conducted additional safety training with the team. He gave us training on proper cloning protocols including PCR, digestion, ligation, transformation, miniprep, plating, and gel electrophoresis.

After our team felt confident to perform safe lab experiments, we discussed what risk class of organisms we wanted to work with. We wanted to make safety a priority, so we chose to only work with Risk Group 1 organisms in our BSL-1 lab. Our project exclusively used NEB 5-alpha Competent E. coli, a nonpathogenic bacteria. This Risk Group 1 organism does not cause any disease in healthy adult humans.

In the day-to-day of our research, we followed the basic safety protocols. We consistently wore proper PPE including closed-toe shoes, long pants, gloves, and lab coats when necessary. We also ensured that we followed standard cleanup protocols, always wiping down the benches with 70% ethanol to ensure there was no spread of microbes or other contaminants as well as following the lab's waste management protocol.

We had many experts supporting us to help with the risk management of our project. We were always supervised in the lab while conducting experiments either by our PI or graduate students whom we could ask questions and troubleshoot with. If we had any specific biosafety questions, we could especially turn to Erin Essington, who was the lab safety officer in the lab.

In addition to the graduate students, we always had the “Laboratory and Research Safety Binder” that the team could refer to if needed. This contained safety plans, our training records, chemical inventory, self-inspection forms, the waste management plan, and other applicable entries.