Safety
1 Summary
Our team has made considerations and corresponding actions to keep and promote the safety of our teammates and society as a whole. Whether it is to ensure safety within the lab or outside of the lab, we have made sure that the potential dangers of engineered strains are contained. Furthermore, the team has strictly followed all COVID and lab requirements to ensure the safety of our team members and the surrounding community. Being persistent on a high degree of safety has been one of our greatest priorities all throughout the session.
2 Safety Design
The use of synthetic biology needs to be safe and reliable, so we should apply bioengineering methods to manage the risks associated with synthetic biology.
Therefore, we made some security designs. In the future, we will design the isolation of ultraviolet lamps in the production process to minimize the escape of engineering bacteria, double isolation of ultraviolet rays and workshops, and reduce pollution to the external environment. We will continue emphasizing experimental safety's importance and improving laboratory safety awareness.
3 Promotion of Public Safety Awareness
We have enriched and actively promoted biosafety knowledge and awareness by participating in online lectures, listening to laboratory teachers, and using social media (our social account tweets, questionnaires, etc.).
The questionnaire received more than 200 results, and the number of readings on the WeChat official account reached 977 times.
4 Lab Safety
Before entering the laboratory, we received safety training and strictly followed these rules. For example: wearing gloves and masks during the whole experimenting process, ladies’ hair tied up, dangerous reagents, and contaminated areas should be managed with an extra layer of protective gloves. We also paid attention to the safe disposal of damaged instruments in designated areas and the classification of waste products in designated recycling places.
Through the study and practice of these safety rules, we have learned extra biosafety knowledge, how to protect ourselves in experiments better, how to reduce exposure to carcinogens, and find reagents more efficiently. The most important thing is to internalize the red line of biosecurity into our hearts and externalize it into actions.
5 COVID-time Safety
We take the COVID-19 pandemic very seriously and are extremely careful not to aid it in its spread. Team members coming from all parts of the country followed all local quarantine regulations and completed all the required nucleic acid tests. All lab requirements were fully met. During lab experiments, protective measures were taken, and masks were always worn. Frequent sanitizations were also performed to ensure total safety. Overall, the team has acted responsibly to aid in keeping the pandemic under control.
6 Safety in Real World Applications
We also ensured that antibiotic-resistant engineered strains were completely eliminated after the degradation process. Although the strains we chose are probiotics, we cannot rule out the possibility that they will mutate and become superbugs after being released into the environment. Therefore, we added the corresponding sterilization function to the septic tank we designed. The engineered strains degrade sulfadiazine (SDZ) in the main tank and flow into the storage tank with the rest of the feces. Several smaller tubes connect the main and storage tanks. What makes these tubes special is the UV lights around them. The tube is transparent to allow the UV light to extinguish the engineered strains carried on the feces. By doing this, the septic tank can both bring sufficient benefits to farmers and eliminate potential safety hazards.