| Safety
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| The well being of others is an important factor in all scientific work. Manycientific advances of recent years have been pioneered in order to improve the lives of those in the community, as well as across the world.
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| Our iGEM project involves working in a laboratory setting, and this poses several potential risks to researchers. Being around dangerous chemicals require us as students to take serious precautions against lapses in lab safety. Gloves and lab coats will be worn at all times in order to prevent accidental chemical contact. Dangerous components have been marked as such to deter misuse. Furthermore, we have received documents explaining our lab safety protocols in detail, and copies will be kept both in the lab alongside the copies we bring home. As for public or environmental safety, we feel our project poses very little risk. We are using non-pathogenic E. Coli, which are unlikely to transfer to other individuals, and testing on live subjects will not be pursued.
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| The Biobrick we plan to create this year should pose no safety risks to the public. There are unknown factors involved in the destruction of bacterial cells; however, since no in vivo testing will take place, any risks involved are nullified.
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| The Biology Health and Safety Committee at the University of St. Andrews is led by Dr. Bernie Precious. We will be working in conjunction with Dr. Precious throughout our project, alongside the standard laboratory safety rules as set by the committee. Reducing risk both within and outside of the lab is key to the success of future scientific advancement. With this in mind, we have recently removed ethidium bromide, a mutagenic substance used for the detection of DNA during gel electrophoresis, from our labs. Replacing potentially harmful substances with safer alternatives will increase lab safety, and allow for a reduction in materials required to handle dangerous chemicals, thus saving us money as well. Safety should be the utmost priority for students of the sciences across the world.
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