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From 2012.igem.org

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The Story so far...

The first three weeks of the project have been set aside to obtain a general biological background, particularly useful for the non-biologists in the team! This will be achieved through several short lectures, discussions and practical laboratory sessions. Project ideas will be put forward with the aim of making the final decision on Thursday 14th June. The subsequent ten weeks are set aside for the project to be developed.

WEEK ONE

28th May 2012
The team arrived and Tom (the project coordinator) started us off with an introduction to the project, shortly followed by John Love giving a talk on synthetic biology. Tom got everyone up to scratch on basic biology (central dogma etc). Orkun Soyer (mathematician) gave a talk on biostability and then Christine Sambles gave an overview of the -omics.

29th May

Clive Butler talked about Thauera selenatis and microbial nano-material synthesis. Nick Smirnoff spoke on metabolic engineering and then Nic Harmer on polysaccharides. The afternoon session was set aside for brainstorming.

1st June

Today's lecturers:

• Tom- biofuel production.
  
• George Littlejohn- biosensors and reporters.
  
• Rob Beardmore (Physics)-dynamic systems modelling.
  
• Peter Petrov (Physics) - bacterial swimming and artificial swimmers.
  

The afternoon session was spent brainstorming – five ideas were shortlisted.For those who are interested in the development of the short-list, the changeable document can be found here [http://www.facebook.com/groups/ExiGEM/doc/237977989645584/].

WEEK TWO

6th June
Initial lab induction with an in depth health and safety talk. Basic lab techniques were practiced, such as gel preparation and creating single colonies, see photograph insert for the very respectable results from a Physicist!

7th June
The second day of lab work- we isolated the DNA and then separated the DNA fragments using Gel Electrophoresis. The estimated sizes were then mapped and compared to expected maps.

8th June
Through many hours of brainstorming and discussion overt the past two weeks, the team has managed to single out a short-list of 6 strong ideas for the project which were presented to a range of relevant academics. After further discussion, two ideas were taken forward to next week...

WEEK THREE