Every member in SZ-SHD wet lab team has learned basic lab access and rules. Besides, we put personal biosecurity at high priority when working through our experiments. We arrange members to be in charge of the daily cleaning of lab equipment and safety check several times a day. Our team set up detail rules towards equipment usage, waste management and specific procedures and protocols that help us maintain lab safety. Under the instruction of our advisors, we set up few penalty rules for members who did not follow basic lab safety, for the overall purpose of increasing the efficiency in lab safety management.
Escherichia coli is a very common bacteria chassis in many iGEM projects. In general, E. coli does not hold too many risks. In order to reduce the leakage of bacteria in the environment, we set up a UV induced self-lysis switch in the bacteria. So that the escaping bacteria will activate the suicide process by ultraviolet light in the daytime.
The PI and advisors of our team are responsible for the safety and security of our team. They offer lab security training for us and supervise us before entering the lab and doing the experiment. Also, they are all experienced working with microbiology, molecular biology, and biochemistry, which may help us a lot. - The MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) of all the reagents we used will always be provided in the lab, every member of our team will be required to read them and strictly follow it for self-protection and the dispose protocol if they spill out.