Team:TMMU-China/Safety

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Introduction to biosafety in synthetic biology

Biosafety is the prevention of large-scale loss of biological integrity, focusing both on ecology and human health. These prevention mechanisms include conduction of regular reviews of the biosafety in laboratory settings, as well as strict guidelines to follow. Biosafety is used to protect us from harmful incidents. High security facilities are necessary when working with Synthetic Biology as there are possibilities of bioterrorism acts or release of harmful chemicals and or organisms into the environment. A complete understanding of experimental risks associated with synthetic biology is helping to enforce the knowledge and effectiveness of biosafety.

Scientist that favor the development of synthetic biology claim that the use of biosafety mechanisms such as suicide genes and nutrient dependencies will ensure the organisms cannot survive outside of the lab setting in which they were originally created. Kill switches were also actively developed to secure biosafety in synthetic biology.

Biosafety training and protection actions in the lab

The experiments are mainly performed at the molecular level. Some biosafety risks may be caused by the reagents we used. For example, we need to use DNA staining molecules for visualization after electrophoresis. All of us wear gloves when dealing with DNA staining molecules. The biological or chemical wastes were collected and sterilized, and the wastes were further treated by professional staffs in our department. Before our research, all of us have taken an online biosafety training course. Furthermore, we received one week biosafety training in the lab. We learned how to operate the UV light-equipped biosafety hood and the high pressure vapour sterilizer. We can clearly discriminate the contaminated area by DNA staining molecules from other clean area. The lab we carried out our experiments is a biosafety level 2 lab according to local regulation agencies. All the members strictly followed the guideline and rules to handle and perform experiments. We wear personal protective equipment, such as lab coats and lab gloves to protect us. In the preliminary development of the Staphylococcus aureus QS system, we contacted the teachers of the Department of Infection of Southwest Hospital and the department of microbiology, consulting withStaphylococcus aureus pathogenicity and biosafety level, which, doctor Li from the Department of Infection introduced to us within recent years, the hospital’s infection situation. The hospital’s acquired infection is always an unavoidable problem, at the same time, professor Wang systematically introduced us with the Staphylococcus aureus biosafety level and experimental operation of the standard process, with provide an basic understanding of Staphylococcus aureus in the initiation of the project.

Contact us
Email: igem@tmmu.edu.cn
Address:Third Military Medical University,
No.30 Gaotanyan Street Shapingba District,
Chongqing, P.R.China 400038