The laboratory safety team (LST) movement was triggered in 2012 by Dow Chemical’s exploration of ways to strengthen academic research safety culture from the bottom up. This necessitated a new form of leadership from graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. This movement has been spreading throughout chemistry and engineering academic research departments in the United States in a grassroots fashion. However, few publications exist providing the details of LST structure and activities. In this paper, we share results from interviews with 16 currently active teams and outline a best practices guide for starting and sustaining LST programs. Interviews yielded five common components that have been identified as useful to establishing an LST as well as six top common challenges. Strategies to overcome these challenges through proper documentation of activities, maximizing relationships within the academic hierarchy, and developing meaningful safety culture metrics to track are discussed. This paper showcases the power of connecting players in the various active LSTs and emphasizes the need for quantifiable and trackable metrics in the next wave of the movement.

The codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), is a major pest of pome fruit worldwide. Incorporation of semiochemicals, including the main sex pheromone (codlemone), into codling moth IPM programs has drastically reduced the amount of chemical insecticides needed to control this orchard pest. Odorant receptors located in sensory neuron membranes in the antennae are key sensors in the detection of semiochemicals and trigger downstream signaling events leading to a behavioral response. CpomOR1 is an odorant receptor belonging to the pheromone receptor subfamily in codling moth, and is a prime candidate for being a codlemone receptor based on its high expression levels in male antennae. In this study, the CpomOR1 gene was targeted using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to knockdown functional OR1 protein production to determine physiological function(s). By injecting early stage eggs, mutations were successfully introduced, including both deletions and insertions. When attempting to create stable populations of codling moth through mating of males with females containing mutations of the CpomOR1 gene, it was found that fecundity and fertility were affected, with edited females producing nonviable eggs. The role of CpomOR1 in fecundity and fertility in codling moth is unknown and will be the focus of future studies.

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The New Haven Local Section of the American Chemical Society held a virtual version of its annual Student Research Symposium prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. A combination of YouTube, Google Drive, Open Broadcaster Software, and Zoom was utilized to hold the symposium which included juried oral and poster presentations. While our aim was to preserve as much of the in-person experience as possible despite the crisis, we found some very encouraging advantages to the virtual format as we designed it. These included reduced presenter fatigue, more substantive one-on-one interactions between student and senior researchers, expanded accessibility for students, faculty, and the general public, and the virtual symposium being a fraction of the cost of an in-person symposium. The details of this experience and advice for its application in the wider educational community are reported.

The pig is an ideal large animal model for genetic engineering applications. A relatively short gestation interval and large litter size makes the pig a conducive model for generating and propagating genetic modifications. The domestic pig also shares close similarity in anatomy, physiology, size, and life expectancy, making it an ideal animal for modeling human diseases. Often, however, the technical difficulties in generating desired genetic modifications such as targeted knockin of short stretches of sequences or transgenes have impeded progress in this field. In this study, we have investigated and compared the relative efficiency of CRISPR/Cas ribonucleoproteins in engineering targeted knockin of pseudo attP sites downstream of a ubiquitously expressed COL1A gene in porcine somatic cells and generated live fetuses by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). By leveraging these knockin pseudo attP sites, we have demonstrated subsequent phiC31 integrase mediated integration of green fluorescent protein (GFP) transgene into the site. This work for the first time created an optimized protocol for CRISPR/Cas mediated knockin in porcine somatic cells, while simultaneously creating a stable platform for future transgene integration and generating transgenic animals.