. Safety .

Safe Project Design

Great importance is attached to safety in our project design.

Firstly, we use E. coli as our chassis organisms, which poses no harm to individuals or environment. E. coli DH5α, DH10β, BL21(DE3) and BW25113 are utilized when we implement the experiments of molecular cloning, expression and verification.

This year our team fight for deinking of waste paper and harmless treatment of wastewater. In the deinking part, we select a highly efficient deinking enzyme to promote the ink separation on the surface of waste paper. To bypass the expensive protein purification step of enzymes, we introduce the signal peptides into our project to secrete target proteins into the supernatant, then use the supernatant to treat waste paper. After deinking process, the paper will be treated with high temperature, which ensures that the engineering bacteria could not leak. In the wastewater treatment part, we selected MT2A and MT3 human metallothioneins and expressed them in engineered bacteria for adsorption of heavy metal ions in wastewater. To avoid the possibility of bacterial diffusion in the environment, we designed a blue-light-activated kill switch that will be activated when the bacteria are exposed to blue light then will trigger the death of the bacteria. Hence, by treating the effluent with blue light, we can ensure complete elimination of bacteria.

All the proteins are totally harmless to human body. All the plasmids are harmless for human beings and none of our parts would raise any safety issue according to the current expertise.

Safe Lab Work

The laboratory is equipped with the location of emergency exits, emergency ventilation devices, fire-fighting equipment, first aid kits, and so on. Every year after recruiting new members, we spend several weeks training them in basic laboratory operations and handling safety accidents. When entering the laboratory, we must wear laboratory clothes, gloves, and goggles. All bacterial culture mediums have undergone sterilization treatment. We strictly follow the BSL-1 regulations to dispose of all biological materials and metabolic waste. The laboratory is also equipped with specialized operators for handling hazardous materials and biological products.

Figure 1 First aid kits of our lab.

At the same time, we invited laboratory safety engineer, Lina Wu, to conduct safety education for all team members when they officially got into the experimental phase.

Figure 2 Members learnt laboratory safety intentions.