Team:Yale/Our Project/Safety

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safety

In our laboratory, all the normal safety precautions were taken for the course of our wetlab work. Normal protocols were observed for plasmid constructions, DNA amplification, digestions, and any outlined assays. These protocols accounted for any necessary safety procedures that would be expected in the course of work. However, outside these normal procedures, our procedure called for the bacterial production of hydrogen sulfide, which can be toxic in large quantities. To account for this acute production from bacterial colonies, our team took some additional safety precautions.

Safety Accounting for Production of Hydrogen Sulfide
We realize that hydrogen sulfide  (H2S) is dangerous and flammable.  We will have the MSDS posted at  all times.   To ensure that bacteria do not constitutively produce H2S, we will have our plasmid under control of an inducible promoter.   H2S production will be 'turned on' only in ventilated hoods. Goggles and gloves will be worn at all times when handling our bacteria.   Fortunately, H2S has a rotten egg smell at 0.5 ppm (50% of people can detect it at 0.00047 ppm) that is easily detectable by smell. The safe exposure limit of H2S is 8 ppm over two months.

To address the safety questions posed by iGEM:

1. Based on our experimental design, our project does not raise any safety issues for the researchers, the public, or the environment. In addition, our iGEM project did not involve working with any infectious host organisms.
2. No, the biobrick submissions do not raise any safety issues.
3. Duke has an in-house review board and they did not raise any flags regarding our project.
4. We have not really thought about this problem, as our project does not involve any safety issues.