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Team:Georgia Tech/Safety
From 2012.igem.org
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Safety Rules and Regulations are an important component of working in a laboratory setting, especially in a synthetic biology lab. That is why, at Georgia Institute of Technology, safety procedures are in place to minimize the risk of mishaps in a laboratory and utmost care is taken such that any accidental or experimental mistakes do not harm the welfare of staff as well as the community.
General Lab Safety: The Georgia Tech iGEM 2012 team follows the guidelines as implemented by the university and all of its members have been trained in Lab Safety Protocols for this purpose. All the team members have attended a presentation on general safety in the lab, understanding material safety data sheets, the meaning of various warning labels, such as those on refrigerators, waste disposal, and autoclaving techniques conducted by the lab safety officer in School of Biology, Marc Pline. The GT iGEM team follows all the safety protocols and guidelines as described by the Georgia Tech Environmental Health & Safety here: http://www.ehs.gatech.edu/
Also, our project follows the policies and procedures governing the possession and use of Recombinant DNA as stipulated by the Georgia Institute of Technology Institutional Biosafety Committee and as laid out in the document attached here: http://www.compliance.gatech.edu/forms/IBC/IBC_PP.pdf
Safety Issues Concerning the GT iGEM 2012 Project:
Environmental and Public Safety: Bacterial Strains Used:
DNA from Agrobacterium tumefaciens: The lab has ordered its DNA to isolate the TraR sequence from it. There are no safety concerns as the lab is not working with the bacterial strain of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Escherichia coli BL21: The bacteria we used, BL21 electrocompetent E. coli, are non-pathogenic and unlikely to survive outside of a laboratory setting, thus not causing any ill effects if released by accident.
Security Risk :
Biobrick Safety Considerations: The proposed biobrick of the Georgia Tech iGEM will consist of the basic parts of DNA of auto-inducer receptor TraR from Agrobacterium tumefaciens and a marker protein such as Green Fluorescent Protein. None of these parts have been documented to raise any safety issues.
Biosafety Regulations at Georgia Institute of Technology:
Our project has been classified as biosafety level 1 and the Occupational Health and Safety Committee and the Environmental Health and Safety Office of the Georgia Institute of Technology has approved Professor Brian Hammer’s laboratory (the lab under which the GT iGEM 2012 team works) for Biosafety Level 1 Research and no concerns have been raised by the committee as regards to our project. As stated above, we have been in constant touch as regards to general lab safety with our department’s lab safety officer Marc Pline and have adhered to all the basic safety protocols.
Combined efforts of all iGEM teams to ensure safety:
With such a young iGEM team comprising of all undergraduates, there is a sharp learning curve associated with learning lab techniques as well as lab safety protocols. The Georgia Tech iGEM team attended biological laboratory safety classes which helped, but many things are being learnt along the way. So, as an effort to make students aware about lab safety early on in their science careers, we will be combining a basic biosafety class with our outreach program at high school. Also, we propose using the media technology to generate an online, visual course on the basic biosafety issues that are specifically related to iGEM research process.
