Overview
Ensuring safety is the primary prerequisite for any scientific experiment. All the work of the NEFU_China has been carried out in an orderly manner under the premise to ensure safety. In the following, we present our safety strategy from three aspects: laboratory safety, experimental design security and hardware security.
Safety of laboratory
Safety of laboratory reagents and instruments: all of our experiments were carried out in a BL1 laboratory. The laboratory is equipped with washbasin, eye washer, first aid kit, medicine kit, fire extinguisher, sand and other protective facilities. All experimental reagents purchased by us are under the pursuit of the highest safety standard. For example, we chose the Goldview as our nucleic acid dye instead of using ethidium bromide, which is highly carcinogenic.
Safety of laboratory education: before a team member entered the laboratory, she or he must have sufficient biological knowledge and passed the laboratory safety test required by the College of Life Science. Prior to conducting any experimental task in the laboratory, all members of the team must have learned the standard operation of the experiments under the guidance of laboratory instructors and graduate students.
Safety of our laboratory system: we have established a strict duty system. Every day, the students on duty will keep the laboratory clean and well-organized, clean up all experimental garbage at the end of the day, and strictly check the switch statuses of all experimental instruments before leaving the laboratory. In addition, during the COVID-19 epidemic period, we also consciously complied with the epidemic prevention policy, such as always wearing masks and controlling the number of people gathered in the laboratory.
Safety of experimental design
We used three kinds of organisms to carry out our research, namely Escherichia coli (DH5α, BL21 and DB3.1), S. cerevisiae (WAT21) and Aspergillus oryzae (AO-NSPLD1). E. coli and yeast are popularly used model organisms, and the yeast employed for fermentation (WAT21) is generally regarded as safe (GRAS) and used for large-scale operations. A. oryzae (AO-NSPLD1) that does not produce aflatoxins is widely used in food, feed, kojic acid production, brewing and other fermentation industries, and has been safely applied for over 1000 years. The genome of A. oryzae has been decoded as an ideal vehicle for the production of eukaryotic active proteins that cannot be expressed by E. coli. We strictly comply with the laboratory operation standards to avoid the escape of laboratory microorganisms to the nature.
Our synthetic product Lycopene (molecular formula C40H56) is a brightly red carotenoid pigment that is found in tomatoes and other red fruits. It is one of the most common and powerful carotenoid antioxidants in the human body, and therefore is a non-toxic natural molecule.
The technical principle for DNA operation used by us is the Golden Gate technology based on the Type IIS restriction enzyme, which is a safe and reliable DNA recombination technology. Laboratory personnel strictly obeyed laboratory safety guidelines to avoid environmental contamination by any of our genetically modified microorganisms.
Safety of hardware
This year, the hardware frame is made of aluminum alloy profiles, which are a kind of non-ferrous metal structural materials with high strength mechanical properties, chemical resistance and corrosion resistance. The parts of gun head components are mainly made of photosensitive resin and ABS materials, which are non-toxic and harmless to the human body. At the same time, the circuit board is covered with plastic wrap to prevent fire or other safety problems caused by liquid splashing. It provides the foundation and guarantee for the security of operation process and the stability of operating system for our overall automated DNA assembly platform. We have designed a temperature control device at the bottom of the device, which consists of a substrate, a copper tier and an insulating layer. The substrate is an insulating plate composed of polymer synthetic resin and reinforced materials, and a layer of copper is attached to the board and then painted, thus forming our temperature control board. In this way, the reaction can be completed, and the reaction mixture in the hardware can be completely inactivated to prevent any potential biohazard pollution from leaking into the environment. Overall, our system is committed to the environmental and human safety to minimize any potential contamination and hazard to the nature and human beings.
