Team:UCL/Safety
Safety
Currently under development
Safety
Laboratories are equipped with many chemicals as well as electrical equipment, which makes it imperative for students and professionals alike to understand and detect safety hazards. iGEM has stressed the importance of lab safety right from the very beginning of the competition, and has made us as a team, be more aware of safety hazards and strive to eliminate them.
Safety Considerations of our Project Design
- Mammalian
- Any hazards with genetically modifying a patient’s own cells for this tech to work?
- Analysis of a light activatable ‘dead-switch’ device that chews up exogenous DNA from the cells. This is supposed to be activated after the cells have created a self-sustaining tissue to ensure the newly generated tissue does not lead to complications after transplantation.
- Once we have produced the 3d printed tissue we should make cells unresponsive to those specific wavelengths so that they cannot be spontaneously activated (e.g. by sunlight)
- Barchitecture
- Intimin presents a lot of hazards
- Hence using bacteria incorporated into architecture and public spaces will have health and safety implications.
- LIT bulb
- Again, public tool → what if it breaks? How much bacteria can kill the person?
- Read about how we will tackle safety issues for our bacterial-powered lightbulb
- Lab Safety
- Use of PPE (lab coat, goggles, gloves) at all stages with all the experiments to prevent any physical contact or contamination with biological materials, including GMOs
- When carrying out chemical aggregation experiments, we used a fume hood cupboard to protect from volatile DMF fumes.
- When performing the IrrE UV crosslinker test as well as any UV gel visualisations, we used UV protection goggles and operated all equipment following the safety manuals.
