iGEM SORBONNE
NAWI
Safety
How we managed the risks
All of our experiments were carried out thanks to the employees of the Laboratory of Computational and Quantitative Biology of Sorbonne University, who welcomed us amongst themselves and allowed us to use their Level 1 lab workspace.
Apart from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, other biological agents used in the lab are non-pathogenic strains of E. coli for cloning, and Agrobacterium tumefaciens, all of which pertain to the biological risk group 1. But the team did have to work with intercalating agents, high-pressure machinery, and GMOs, all of which pose their own threats to health and safety. Other hazards stemmed from external risks, like the Covid-19 pandemic, working conditions (e.g. heatwaves), electrical hazards or user error.
Every person using the lab had to prove they were insured before being able to use the equipment and were instructed on lab safety and sterility conditions by a few of the team members. The team followed the regulations of health, safety and preventive medicine applied to French public services, as described by the decree No. 82-453, referring to the Labor, Health and Environmental Code. If any questions were raised, we were instructed to always seek validation from the lab personnel. The confined use of GMOs is subject to the European directive 2009/41/CE, whose transposition to French law resides in the Environmental Code.
Some basic rules were established concerning personal safety and contamination risk reduction, and when using new equipment, a member of the lab always supervised the team and provided training. Specific training was provided for work concerning intercalating agents, biological safety cabinets, strain containment and inactivation and waste management.
Even if lab work was done in a contained environment, our product we developed needed its own safety precautions: during our collaboration with UESTC_BioTech, we adapted the idea of a UV-sensitive killswitch for Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, that even if not designed for our project specifically, could theoretically be used in any Chlamydomonas reinhardtii bioproduction process after further testing and calibration.
