The team members from the Baltimore Biocrew received a safety presentation covering lab practices and procedures from our lab mentors. We learned about lab techniques, lab hygiene, personal protective equipment, chemical hazards, and the adverse impacts those hazards could have. We then made sure to implement our knowledge in future experiments and execute all lab work in agreement with the safety guidelines of our labs, which are both Biosafety Level 1. Our biggest hazard was the E. coli bacteria that we used, and we made sure to bleach all of our cultures. Instead of ethidium bromide for gels, we used Apex Safe Stain. All of our experiments were overseen by mentors with experience in the lab and in different fields of science. Lisa Scheifele, a Professor of biology at Loyola University Maryland, also supervised lab work as the Executive Director of BUGSS and primary PI of our team. We conducted our work at Baltimore Underground Science Space community lab, and they have a complete safety manual that guided our work.
We are taking safety precautions both in our lab environment and in our project design. While our miRNA-155, miRNA-21, toehold switches, and fluorescent molecules all have low risks, they could potentially pose hazards if the bacteria we used to make them were unintentionally released or overused. In the case that any modified cellular components spread outside the lab, they could interact with unintended biological systems. Additionally, if these components were overused, they could interfere with normal cellular processes in the host cells. To prevent these scenarios, we are incorporating containment measures into our system. We are using controlled, inducible systems and maintaining all cellular components under laboratory-specific conditions (IPTG or rhamnose) that are not present in natural environments. These precautions ensure that our modified constructs cannot survive or function outside of the intended experimental setting. Because our original intention was to create an at-home test, we would have needed to consider additional precautions. This is another reason that we switched over to favoring a cell-free system since we wouldn’t have to worry about biocontainment.