Safety

Overview

We produce a natural amino acid family called MAAs by genome editing Saccharomyces cerevisiae. They are used for preventing the harm done by UV radiation and replacing the harmful ingredient in chemical and physical sunscreens. The main aim for our project is to bring healthier, safer biological products to people around the world. Also to protect the environment by creating harmless and natural products. So the safety of our members, users and environment is the most important thing we consider about during experiments and activities.

Lab Safety

Like many other advanced bio-safety level 1 laboratories all over the world, our laboratory prioritizes lab safety as one of the most essential factors in conducting appropriate scientific research. LINKS_China 2022 hopes to minimize the harm and contamination to the individuals involved in our project and environment surround our project area. Our team members at LINKS_China2022 have all been instructed on the safety requirements by the teachers in our laboratory before the experiment started. Our team members need to enter the lab with masks, protective gloves, lab coats. We must frequently change protective gloves and other disposables are after they are being contaminated, and thrown them into special bins after used. We are not allowed to bring food and drinks into the lab area, and touching anything without gloves on is also prohibited. In our lab, the contaminated area and non-contaminated area are separated. Experiments such as SDS-page and agarose electrophoresis will only be performed in the contaminated area. When performing these experiments, we need to use specific experimental apparatus, which are correctly labeled and cannot be taken out of the contaminated area. Experimental materials such as pipette tips and test tubes are strictly sterilized before putting into use, and they are disposed into specific containers to prevent them from contaminating anything.

Figure 1 and 2. The protection when members proform experiments

In experiments which may cause harm, our team members are not allowed to use poisonous, heavy metals, volatile strong acids or dangerous materials without instructions from the teachers. Our lab is equipped with emergency devices in case members splash dangerous chemicals into skin or eyes. In MAAs extracting experiments, we use less poisonous ethyl acetate with protection and instructions form teacher instead of using very dangerous chloroform. We prevent direct attachment with methyl alcohol when using it to dissolve agar; we need to make the weights of solutions in centrifugal tube being balanced before using the centrifugal machine. With clear directions form the teachers,we test the sorption value of MAAs using UV lights because UV may be harmful to human tissues.

Project Safety

Our results will benefit the environment and people. MAAs，which are our final products are not living bacteria, they are harmless, and benefit to the people, marine creatures and the ocean because they are natural products. We use CRSIPR-cas9 plasmids and lithium acetate transformation to genome edit Saccharomyces cerevisiae, this experiments will not produce harmful byproducts. and because of the lithium acetate, CRISPR-cas9 plasmids will not be released to the environment causing unneeded gene editing to other creatures. Transformation experiments are done in aseptic conditions, so they will not be polluted and it will not do harm to our members during the experiments.

The Security and Ethic of Human Practice activities

We have an open heart to everyone who take part in our interviews. We accept all standpoint as long as they are willing to share and tell us how they feel about our project and synthetic biology. We respect their privacy and will not collect personal information by ourselves. The interviews and exhibitions do not include any viewpoints personal and unrelated to the project.

Figure 3. Links interviewing Lantern.

In our exhibitions, education activities we introduce synthetic biology in the form of board games about yeast, which may interest and leave a good impression of synthetic biology and microorganism to audience. In the exhibitions we use commercialized natural yeast and bio-leather made from bacterial cellulose provided by LINK SPIDER Co., Ltd. to illustrate the charm of bio-materials. In the exhibitions we do not include any gene edited creature and anything involved in the project. All the materials are justified and total safe to human.

Figure 4: Educational exhibition in SCIE-a local high school.

Figure 5 and 6. Comercialized yeast and bio-leather used in the exhibitions. Educational exhibition in SCIE-a local high school.