Revision as of 07:39, 24 June 2012

Notebook: Week 2

Aims For This Week

After last weeks training week we hope to finally begin construction. There are still a few hurdles: Our genetic circuits need our supervisor's approval and we might need to order some additional parts.
One of the human practice events we're most excited about is collaborating with the DIYbio community. We want to finalize the concept and find a space for it, as well as apply for funding. Hopefully we also have a much nicer and more complete wiki by the end of this...
Also, we will be creating our "project trailer" this week, which we'll use for a very exciting Kickstarter campaign...

Monday

Wiki Meeting - Today we had a meeting to assess the progress on wiki.

Tuesday

Meeting - Fundraising. We all met with Kate from Biochem Eng about getting publicity for crowd fundraising

Meeting - Public Engagement. Met with Hilary from Public Engagement Unit regarding beacon bursary for DIYbio project

Wednesday

Wet Lab Training - Today we proceeded to train other team members in restriction enzyme digest and transforming bacteria.

Modelling meeting – Talked through conceptual problems, outlined how the models should work, and made some decisions about how to proceed

London Hackspace Meeting – Philipp, Yeping, Leonard and Martina visited the Hackspace Base at Old Street to discuss our ideas for human practice. They also had the opportunity to try some of their equipment, including running a gel in their lab.

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 ==Tuesday==
-We met early for a talk on the basics of synthetic biology, and for an introduction to Gibson Assembly, given by Ben Mackrow. Ben has a lot of personal experience of using this technique, and gave us a lot of useful advice about the benefits and limitations of such technique.
-<div class="notebook-meeting">'''Press Team Meeting – What Should a Press Kit Contain?''' The team met to discuss how we can convey our project to the Press – in particular whether it would be best to place the focus on the problem of microplastics, or the concept of an island as a solution for this problem. For the press release, and for our other forms of media, we have decided to focus on the island. Though an ‘island’ it is an illusory endpoint to our project – it is highly visible, and will foo idea that synthetic biology can be used to improve the state of the planet.  </div>
+<div class="notebook-meeting"> '''Meeting - Fundraising'''. We all met with Kate from Biochem Eng about getting publicity for crowd fundraising </div>
-<div class="notebook-meeting">'''Construction Crew Meeting – Conjugation.''' The Construction Crew continued their search for a way to prevent conjugation. They discussed ‘geneageddon’ -  a theoretical biobrick enabling bacteria to secrete nucleases, which will digest any plasmids released during cell lysis. Also, they considered using the Imperial iGEM 2011 toxin/antitoxin system to prevent gene transfer by conjugation. Our GMO would carry a toxin gene on its plasmids and an antitoxin gene on its chromosomal DNA. Upon conjugation, only the toxin gene would be delivered to the wild-type recipient, and so any conjugation between GMO and wild-type would be lethal for the wild-type. Spread of genetically modified DNA would therefore be prevented. In particular, we aim to combine these genes on a single plasmid, and therefore improve the Imperial biobrick.</div>
+<div class="notebook-meeting"> '''Meeting - Public Engagement.''' Met with Hilary from Public Engagement Unit regarding beacon bursary for DIYbio project </div>
-In the afternoon, there was Wet Lab Training. We were trained to use various equipment around the lab, and how to make important solutions for our experiments. In particular, we were trained to carry out a restriction enzyme digest, and how to inoculate bacteria.
 == Wednesday ==

Team:University College London/Notebook/Week2

From 2012.igem.org