Team:IIT Delhi/Safety

SAFETY

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

iGEM IIT Delhi follows a high standard of safe and responsible biological engineering. We completely understand that we are responsible for living up to the trust placed in us to design, build, and share biological devices safely.

About the lab and Safety Training

Following issues were discussed in the training for safety of lab:

• Lab access and rules (including appropriate clothing, eating and drinking, etc.).
• Responsible individuals (such as lab or departmental specialist or institutional biosafety officer).
• Differences between biosafety levels.
• Biosafety equipment (such as biosafety cabinets).
• Good microbial technique (such as lab practices).
• Disinfection and sterilization.
• Emergency procedures.
• Chemicals, fire and electrical safety.

The issue of transport rules was not covered and therefore, we didn’t have enough idea about the same in the beginning. Later through the collaboration on GMM Legislation we got a good insight of the transport rules in various parts of the world.

Risk Group and Safety Level laboratory 3 or 4

No work was conducted with Risk Group 3 or 4 organisms.

Chassis organism used : E.coli.
Strains of E.coli used : DH5-alpha, K-12, BL-21.
Description : Risk Group 1 organisms do not cause disease in healthy adult humans.
Lab Safety Level : Safety Level 1.

Besides our chassis, we used Streptomyces griseus (Orf2), Bacillus megaterium, Pseudomonas putida(SrpR) , Pseudomonas fluorescens (PhlF) and Bacillus subtilis (LmrA) because we are interested in repressor proteins expressed in these micro-organism. We have found the sequence and had it synthesized by a provider or fish it out from the organisms using PCR.

Since The project is not associated with Risk Group 3 and 4 Organisms and therefore no work was conducted by the team in a Safety Level 3 or 4 laboratory.

Safe Shipment Guidelines

iGEM IIT Delhi has always followed safe shipment guidelines while submitting samples. Certificates has always been processed and verified before any shipment. Here is ‘Non Infectious and Non Hazardous Certificate’ attached for shipment of one of the DNA samples.
https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/1/1a/T--IIT_Delhi--Certificate_safety.pdf

Release or deployment of the project

iGEM IIT Delhi has not released or deployed our project outside of the laboratory at any time during the competition or at the Giant Jamboree.

Biosafety rules and regulations

iGEM IIT Delhi has always been following all biosafety rules of our institution and concerned biosafety laws of our country.

EHLSU (Environmental Health and Lab Safety Unit) is responsible for holding up all the safety guidelines in all the labs (including ours) at the institution. The guidelines can be found on the link -
http://dbtbiosafety.nic.in/guideline/pdf/guidelines_94.pdf

The safety guidelines for all the labs in our region (North India) are declared and monitored by EHLSU, whose rules can be found on the following link -
http://dbtbiosafety.nic.in/guideline/pdf/guidelines_94.pdf
iGEM IIT Delhi did not conduct any experiment with human subjects (including non-invasive experiments, such as surveys), for the surveys conducted we have followed the rules of our institution.

General Safety rules of lab

• Instructions are strictly followed.
  
• Personal protection equipment is must and hair should be tied.
  
• Working areas and common work areas are kept tidy and regularly wiped with cleansing agents like ethanol.
  
• Pipette tips, media, eppendorf tubes are autoclaved and Glassware; tools are cleaned with ethanol before usage.
  
• Handwash is a must after entering and before leaving the lab.
  
• Gloves are used while handling carcinogenic agents like EtBr and high temperature objects.
  
• There is a separate work bench for experiments in which toxic chemicals (e.g. Electrophoresis, Etbr).
  
• Eating or drinking is prohibited in the lab.
  
• Spills are immediately cleaned.
  
• Lab is equipped with safety equipment and everyone is aware of its location (E.g. Fire extinguishers and first aid supplies).
  
• Appropriate protection is used while working with UV light(eye protection, gloves, lab coat).
  
• Lab waste is properly disposed (E.g. Biological cultures are disposed after addition of ethanol to kill micro-organisms; Solids are kept out of the sink; Agarose gel, gloves, the hazardous wastes are disposed separately in the bio-hazard coloured bin).
  

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