J/16 July 2012

From 2012.igem.org

(Difference between revisions)

Latest revision as of 09:17, 23 July 2012

July
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						[http://2012.igem.org/J/1_July_2012 1]
[http://2012.igem.org/J/2_July_2012 2]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/3_July_2012 3]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/4_July_2012 4]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/5_July_2012 5]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/6_July_2012 6]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/7_July_2012 7]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/8_July_2012 8]
[http://2012.igem.org/J/9_July_2012 9]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/10_July_2012 10]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/11_July_2012 11]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/12_July_2012 12]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/13_July_2012 13]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/14_July_2012 14]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/15_July_2012 15]
[http://2012.igem.org/J/16_July_2012 16]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/17_July_2012 17]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/18_July_2012 18]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/19_July_2012 19]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/20_July_2012 20]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/21_July_2012 21]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/22_July_2012 22]
[http://2012.igem.org/J/23_July_2012 23]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/24_July_2012 24]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/25_July_2012 25]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/26_July_2012 26]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/27_July_2012 27]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/28_July_2012 28]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/29_July_2012 29]
[http://2012.igem.org/J/30_July_2012 30]	[http://2012.igem.org/J/31_July_2012 31]

Day Sixteen

(10:30 am) The team that was here in the early morning had a quick briefing, and decided to get the minimal media ready. The ingredients used was exactly the same as used in the reference paper. This gave Chris some trouble trying to measure out the the salts, with some of them being only 0.001 grams per litre of water. This equates to 1 grain of salt in the container.

(12:00 pm) The agar has been autoclaved, and is now sat in the hybridizer waiting for our polystyrene to get crushed to be stirred into it. The polystyrene is proving to be very resilient and is resolving our focus to help degrade it.

(14:00 pm) The polystyrene has been frozen at -80oC for almost 2 hours in an attempt to freeze then smash it into a powder. It didn't work, but several references were found that temperatures of -130-150oC will then freeze it to a more brittle form that will then easily be smashed and can be used as a powder dissolved into the agar.

(16:15 pm) One of the other supervisors took pity on the team at this point so helped us out with a case of liquid nitrogen. However even flash freezing some of the polystyrene sugar in liquid nitrogen (approx -180oC), then smashing the beads with a pestle and mortar made no change at all. Even using polystyrene dissolved in acetone then frozen will not be broken into smaller pieces, it just goes flat.

@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 {|align="justify"
-|===== Day Four =====
+|
-(10:00 am) Started looking at the colonies and taking photos until the camera died after 11. The other 16 will have to wait until later.
+===== Day Sixteen =====
+(10:30 am) The team that was here in the early morning had a quick briefing, and decided to get the minimal media ready. The ingredients used was exactly the same as used in the reference paper. This gave Chris some trouble trying to measure out the the salts, with some of them being only 0.001 grams per litre of water. This equates to 1 grain of salt in the container.
-(13:00 pm) Finished photographing all colony plates as the camera was charged. The next stage to make new plates which have polystyrene as the sole carbon source in an attempt to isolate the microbes from our normal agar colonies that use polystyrene, it's a way of purifying our colonies. This may take a while for the colonies to grow so our computer scientist, Emily, will run simulations of what the degradation would look like over a period of time that exceeds the running time of our project. the new plates consist of a very small amount of agar so that when this carbon source runs out they switch to the expanded polystyrene which we have melted with acetone to produce a molten polystyrene suspended in the acetone. To maintain the liquid state of the polystyrene we will use the orbital shaker provided by Heathrow scientific for which we are very grateful. The polystyrene sludge is then placed as a layer in the glass petri dish with a thin layer of agar on and around the polystyrene to start the growth of the bacteria, but will quickly be used up on top of the polystyrene, and will support and outside colonies that spread past the edge of the polystyrene.
+(12:00 pm) The agar has been autoclaved, and is now sat in the hybridizer waiting for our polystyrene to get crushed to be stirred into it. The polystyrene is proving to be very resilient and is resolving our focus to help degrade it.
-(14:30 pm) If this doesn't work for some reason, we are testing out the dissolving power of other solvents on polystyrene. 50%, 66% and 75% Acetone (diluted with still water) had no effect on the polystyrene. Pure methanol is the next target, and also had no effect on the polystyrene.
+(14:00 pm) The polystyrene has been frozen at -80oC for almost 2 hours in an attempt to freeze then smash it into a powder. It didn't work, but several references were found that temperatures of -130-150oC will then freeze it to a more brittle form that will then easily be smashed and can be used as a powder dissolved into the agar.
+(16:15 pm) One of the other supervisors took pity on the team at this point so helped us out with a case of liquid nitrogen. However even flash freezing some of the polystyrene sugar in liquid nitrogen (approx -180oC), then smashing the beads with a pestle and mortar made no change at all. Even using polystyrene dissolved in acetone then frozen will not be broken into smaller pieces, it just goes flat.