In the face of a large number of experimental samples and chemical reagents, we consistently implement safety regulations, focus on safety management, strengthen safety education, and ensure the health and happiness of every student involved in laboratory work. This year's iGEM safety form helped us to start thinking about how to safely conduct our experiments, properly handle samples, and design our future application safety technologies before implementing the project. In the end, with the efforts of many parties, our team safely completed all the experiments and made design improvements. Here's what our team has done about laboratory safety.

In order to better complete our Safety Form, we have a close communication with the responsible teachers of our EHS (Office of Environment, Health and Safety).

We outline the safety conditions that our project design and iGEM require us to design and confirm in advance. We then asked them questions and got a series of suggestions from project design to lab safety. Including but not limited to:

1. How to solve the leakage problem of the product: a spill kit can be designed in conjunction with the product, such as a fungicide, which can prevent the spread of bacteria to the environment.

2. Solid waste must also be autoclaved, and it is necessary to ask to determine how to deal with the solid waste of this religion in the future.

3. EHS also has official biosafety specifications that can be supplemented with safety forms.

ShanghaiTech University EHS Website:   https://ehs.shanghaitech.edu.cn/

We also interviewed Professor Sun Junsong, distinguished professor, researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, for the safety design of the project. He mainly conducts microbial molecular modification and applied microbial research in the fields of synthetic biology and metabolomics, and green manufacturing, bioenergy, and biopolysaccharides. Professor Sun Junsong analyzed the necessity of safety design from the perspective of the natural properties of the chassis organisms we utilize. He said that our prokaryotic bacteria are difficult to occupy the dominant ecological niche when applied in the natural environment, and can easily become food for other environmental microorganisms, but in order to prevent low-probability leakage events, designing a suicide system does have its effect.

Yang Jing, Senior engineer

Undergraduate biology experiment teaching teacher at ShanghaiTech University

We interviewed Ms. Yang Jing, who is in charge of undergraduate biology experimental teaching at ShanghaiTech University, and asked her about the precautions for raising cyanobacteria in the laboratory, and further standardized our treatment of pollutants.

In addition, we also consulted Mr. Yang's suggestions for our project and learned about the issues we may need to consider when designing hardware. At the same time, we also learned some of the things that our products need to do when facing mass production and industrialization.

Through the guidance of Mr. Yang, the safety of our laboratory can be guaranteed, and after that, we need to further standardize our operations. At the same time, in addition to laboratory safety, we also need to ensure the safety of the product in use, so we also need to conduct further interviews in terms of safety.

This year, our team's experiments are mainly around two chassis: Escherichia coli, Synechococcus elongatus. All of them are BSL-1 microorganisms, so our lab is qualified enough to engineer them. Under a third-party safety review invited by iGEM, we upgraded our safety measures for microorganisms and used recommended biosafety cabinets for microbiological experiments. In this way, we have greatly improved the safety factor of the relevant experiments.

Our laboratory guidelines include but are not limited to:

• The instruction of the safety information board must be clear, with a safety inspection and health duty management system.

• The ventilation system of the experimental site is in normal operation, the fume hood and super clean bench can be used normally, and the cabinet door is opened at an appropriate height. Put the goods neatly, and do not pile up debris.

• When entering the laboratory, you should wear personal protective equipment as required. You should not leave the laboratory wearing PPE such as contaminated lab clothes and gloves.

• Food and drink must not be present in the laboratory.

• The laboratory has an emergency evacuation route map, and the fire escape is unobstructed. The laboratory is equipped with suitable fire-fighting equipment, emergency spray, eyewash, and first aid kit, which are regularly maintained.

• Any dangerous use of electricity is prohibited in the laboratory.

• The hazardous chemicals comply with the relevant regulations of the state and the school. Laboratory personnel should understand the hazardous characteristics of the chemicals used, safety protection knowledge, storage methods, waste treatment, emergency treatment methods, etc.

• Hazardous waste and general waste shall be stored separately, and hazardous waste labels shall be posted.

• Waste fluids containing bacteria need to be sanitized before being poured down the drain.

Due to the need for experiments with potentially hazardous chemicals, there are regulations governing the chemicals in our laboratories. Details can be found in the EHS manual:

https://ehs.shanghaitech.edu.cn/sysaqsc/list.htm

We strictly ensure that chemical dosing is carried out in a dedicated chemical fume hood.

In addition, we completely checked all the locations where chemical reagents were stored, ensuring that bottles without stored reagents were placed below the sight of the laboratory.

Before all the experiments began, the students in charge of the experiments in our team had learned the safety education of equipment including ultra-clean tables, biological safety cabinets, fume hoods, PCR instruments, metal baths and other equipment, and conducted a two-semester basic course in chemical experiments. Many first-year students in our iGEM team came to raise their safety awareness. With the help of our laboratory teacher, Dr. Yang Jing, we conducted additional laboratory safety education, taught the relevant regulations on biology and chemical operations, and also emphasized that our experimental students should follow the relevant protocols to carry out experimental exploration, and must be assisted and monitored by senior team members before conducting experiments. After completing the training of all the wet test team members, we signed and confirmed the additional experimental safety protocol on the spot.

Under these experimental safety training, our experiments were carried out smoothly. During the months-long experiment, there were no laboratory safety incidents.