Team:Cambridge/Diary/TheFinalMonth

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Revision as of 22:36, 26 October 2012 by Olijme (Talk | contribs)
Week: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 The Final Month

Our final month of work on Sporduino

So, unsurprisingly, given that we have been lauched into term time at the same time as finishing off our project, not as much work has been done as would necessarilly be desired. Alas, it's tough to juggle the approximately forty journals worth of reading and two projects. But we have made some progress.

Two more biobricks (the fluoride riboswitch and ratiometrica) have successfully been produced, and will hopefully be submitted to the registry ASAP. On the subject of ratiometrica, we have attempted some more plate reader assays - alas No. 2: M9 fails to grow cells with any competency. Or else we are just incompetent at making M9. In any case, the data that we had before the European jamboree remains our most useful. Attempts to insert the fluoride riboswitch into ratiometrica have also failed, possibly due to the tiny size of the riboswitch insert.

We have, however, managed to get some data regarding our luciferase construct from DNA2.0. Matthew Hawkeye from the nanophotonics department of the University has kindly helped Tom to determine the emission spectrum of the construct, both induced and uninduced. Alas No. 3, we were unable to replicate the results of the original paper which demonstrated a spectral shift upon the addition of mOrange. Toxicity appears to have increased in the presence of IPTG, which could be stretched to a positive finding (it would appear to indicate that we are producing considerably greater quantities of the LUXA - mOrange fusion than under normal conditions, which puts the metabolism of the cell under considerable strain). We would be hard pressed to consider this an optimal result, however.

Stewart has been collaborating with the Gronegen team