Safety
Our Safety Procedures
Our Safety Procedures
A large part of the PFAS problem is due to the lack of care and diligence given to its handling and disposal. Learning the history and observing the negative impact PFAS has on both the environment and people gave our team a unique focus on safety both within and beyond the lab. We cover the safety precautions taken by the team and how we implemented safety throughout our project design.
Our team consistently understood and obeyed the safety precautions taken within the lab setting. Before setting foot in the lab, our Advisor took the team on a Safety tour and informed us of Thompson Lab’s Biosafety level 1 status. We followed Biosafety Level 1 protocols. This includes:
The Thomson Lab is also equipped with all of the necessary safety equipment for the lab, such as a safety shower and eyewash stations.
Another safe procedure we implemented into our project was the use of a cell free expression system called TXTL. Cell free expression is exactly what it sounds like! It allows us to use the benefits and inner workings of E.coli to express proteins, but without the live bacteria to worry about. It also offers a more consistent yield and less room for biological error since it is not a living microorganism.
Including adhering to BSL1, we also took into consideration how toxic PFAS is. When meeting with expert Prof. Ariel Furst, we discussed ways to safely test our enzyme(s) on real PFAS in order to judge our degradation of the chemical. Dr. Furst generously offered to use her lab to test our enzyme on PFAS, with us having no involvement in the actual test process. This allowed us to obtain professional results for our enzyme, while also being able to be safe in the lab by not coming into contact with PFAS itself.