Team:UC Chile2/A brief summary on december

A brief summary on December

Spring

To form an iGEM the first thing you need is people. And to get people you need to go out there and tell them about well, iGEM. So, the first time I heard about all this was in a talk given by Bernardo in the Engineering faculty. That same talk was repeated in most UC Chile campuses (the ones in Santiago). The more people hear about it the better. A course on synthetic biology was going to be held on December and 30 spots were opened for interested people. To apply you needed to fill a form that had questions like: what would be your asset to a potential team? Do you have time during January?

So on December 2, the people selected received an e-mail saying that they were inscribed in the course and attendance was mandatory. The selection criteria included: grades and ranking, amount of courses done in the university and the responses in the form.

The course began on December 12 and finished on 23. During the morning lectures were given by different professors and the afternoons were left for wet labing.

The program was as follows:

Two tasks were assigned to us in order to evaluate our performance and therefore, select the final 10 team members. The first Friday all the people in the course had to give a 3 minute talk on 3 interesting iGEM projects, identify their common characteristics and propose a reason why they were successful. The second task was to propose a project that could be developed. We were given 5 minutes to talk this time.

Spring is an awesome time for iGEM. All the experimental lab work had the expected results, the weather was temperate and Bernardo smoke much less.

Final team members: - Simón Álamos (Agricultural sciences)

- Emilia Díaz (Bioengineering)

- Sebastián Espinoza (Biochemistry)

- Max Felis (Bioengineering)

- Tamara Matute (Bioengineering)

- Ulises Mayol (Pharmaceutical chemistry)

- Rolando Moraga (Architecture)

- Isaac Núñez (Bioengineering)

- Bryon Silva (Biochemistry)

- Claudia Stuckrath (Structural engineering)

- Carla Vidal (Bioengineering)

We hope that the 2012 course turns out great as well. We will make sure of that! We earned our position as course assistants and Bernardo will not be so loaded with work this time. To check our plans for the 2012 course visit (link to workshop)

Monday Dec 12

10:00 - 11:00 (Rodrigo Iturriaga) Couse introduction, program and evaluation methodology. 11:00 - 12:50 (Fernán Federici) Introduction to SynBio and iGEM. 14:00 - 16:00 (Fernán Federici) Biology, central dogma and genetic engineering.

16:30 - 18:00 (Lab) Laboratory safety. Balances, solutions and pipettes.

Tuesday Dec 13

10:00 - 10:30 (Round of questions) 10:30 - 12:50 (Bernardo González) Microbiology. 14:00 - 16:00 (Fernán Federici) Reporters (Fluorescence, Bioluminiscence and pigmentation)

Sala Prácticos 16:00 - 18:00 (Lab) Asepsis. Bacterial transformation and plating. Colony isolation. 16:30 - 17:15 (Bernardo Pollak) Partsregistry.org, iGEM.org.

Wed Dec 14 (lecture only)

10:00 - 10:30 (Round of questions) 10:30 - 12:50 (Fernán Federici) Molecular biology techniques (PCR, electrofphoresis, restriction enzymes, primer design (general), transformation by CaCl2 method, transformed colony selection) 14:00 - 18:00 (Fernán Federici) Gibson Assembly. Primer design. Synthia (Mycoplasma laboratorium).

Thursday Dec 15 (Lab only)

10:00 - 10:30 (Round of questions) 10:30 - 12:50 (Lab) PCR 14:00 - 15:00 (Lab) Electrophoresis 15:00 - 16:00 (Lab) DNA purification 16:00 - 17:00 (Lab) Gibson Assembly. 17:00 - 18:00 (Lab) Bacterial transformation and plating

Friday Dec 16

10:00 - 16:00 (Presentations)

Week 2, Synbio fundamentals and biological machines

Monday Dec 19

10:00 - 10:30 (Round of questions) 10:30 - 12:50 (Rodrigo Gutierrez) Systems biology. Synthetic biology, engineering principle and Biobricks. 14:00 - 15:00 (Ana Zuñiga) Quorum sensing: signal peptide and AHL (Acyl Homoseril Lactone)

15:00 - 18:00 (Lab) PCR for Gibson Receiver C6-AHL and purification.

Tuesday Dec 20

10:00 - 10:30 (Round of questions) 10:30 - 12:50 (Eduardo Agosín) Metabolic flux. Mathematical modelling.

14:00 - 18:00 (Lab) Gibson and transformation.

Wed Dec 21

10:00 - 10:30 (Round of questions) 10:30 - 12:50 (Bernardo Pollak) Synbio perspectives. Synthetic life (Craig Venter), Directed evolution (George Church), cell-cell communication in bacteria and animal cells (Ron Weiss), photographic biofilm (Chris Voigt), Artemisin and biofuel (Jay Keasling). Discussion.

14:00 - 17:00 (Lab) AHL receiver experiment, expression gradient.

Thursday Dec 22

10:00 - 17:00 (Presentations)

Friday Dec 23

10:00 - 12:50 Feedback and course closure.

Finally, check what we have prepared for next year!