Journal: Our iGEM Story

Timeline

December-March

December 2011

Team St Andrews forms, uniting nine students, seven world class researchers and four PhD advisors from disciplines as diverse as Computer Science and Physics, to Biology, Medicine and Chemistry.

January - March 2012

Applications for sponsorship are made to specifically chosen businesses and organisations with an interest in advancing the Life Sciences. Very quickly, "BioSilta", "GenScript", "Clontech", "Geneious", "Integrated DNA Technologies" and "Thermo Fisher" pledge their support and Team St Andrews grows...

10 March 2012

National Science and Engineering Week explodes in Fife with a regional "Science Discovery Day". Team St Andrews works to convey fundamental concepts in Genetic Engineering and Synthetic Biology to members of the public in new and exciting ways. The interactive "Codon Game", the 3 Dimensional visualisations of DNA and DNA polymerase 3 and display "E. Coli: under the Microscope" are all well received. Children and adults alike are fascinated when DNA is extracted from bananas, using everyday kitchen utensils, before their eyes.

April 2012

Brainstorming sessions are held as the team researches project ideas. Some promising titles include:

• "E. Coli and Omega 3: A Project to Feed the Minds of Our Generation"

• "Enzymatic Methane Conversion in Cows: a Sweet Smelling Approach to Reducing Climate Change"

• "Resurfacing Science, Resurfacing our Roads: Cell Factories and Metal Binding Proteins Recover Pavement Platinum"

• "Project Bio-logic-al: Optimizing Soil Composition by Method of Biological Computation"

27 April 2012

Team member Josi presents "Spider Mutants and Bioterrorism - an Overview of Synthetic Biology as an Emerging Scientific Discipline" to a “TEDx” audience of over eighty scientists and non - scientists akin. Josi views the field as "ground breaking" and by the end of her talk, members of her audience too admit surprise at the wealth of possibilities that this new research area makes available. There is excitement at the tantalizing proximity of reality of these ideas.

May 2012

Project ideas are discussed in greater detail and are filtered until only two research topics remain. Those preferred ideas are: the production of Omega 3 Fatty Acids by E. Coli Cells ("E. Coli and Omega 3: A Project to Feed the Minds of Our Generation") and the production of Metal – Binding Proteins ("Resurfacing Science, Resurfacing our Roads: Cell Factories and Metal Binding Proteins Recover Pavement Platinum").

June

Week 1

4 June 2012

Full time work on Team St Andrews' iGEM Project finally begins! After an initial Group Meeting, two thirds of our student members continue in depth research into those project ideas generated previously; the rest begin work on Team St Andrews' Wiki.

5 June 2012

"CLC bio" and "Epoch Life Science" are the latest businesses to offer support to Team St Andrews. The former promises CLC bio Main Workbenches to members of the team while the latter offers products and expertise in DNA/ RNA preparation for molecular manipulation.

Team "ω-3" weekly summary

Research into polyunsaturated fatty acids has been active for over 15 years, with successes varying from creating transgenic plants enriched in ω-3 fatty acids to expressing an entire synthetic pathway from a gene clusters extracted from marine bacteria. We want to expand on this area of research by attempting to express a aerobic synthesis of unsaturated fatty acids in E.coli, which has never been done before. By combining the genes of the cyanobacteria Synechococcus and trypanosome T. brucei into E.coli, this vector should be able to synethise a unsaturated fatty acid up to at least 22-carbon length!

This week, our team has been focusing on preliminary research by reading relevant scientific papers and understanding the various pathways and methods of recombination. We’re focusing on groundwork research done in the early 1990s that appears to have fallen off the radar, and are excited to see where this path will take us!

Metal Binding Proteins: Hannah Investigates

"After a short meeting (which was dominated by the excitement of receiving our very own iGEM pins) we decided to split our iGEM family of nine into three groups. Josi, Veronica and Yiwang were to look into Omega-3 production; Constantine, Michael and I were to investigate Metal Binding Proteins and Antti, Alexey and Zoe were to focus on setting up the wiki.

The wiki team duly produced a sophisticated template.

The research teams, however, were unanimously agreed that biology is hard. Our motif quickly became standardised. Read, Think, Re-read, Re-think, Repeat.

After three days, our previously nomadic team settled in the University’s new Biomedical Sciences Research Complex. This proved to be a good move as it was followed by breakthroughs on all fronts. Metal binding peptides were located in their tens and the decision was made to try and express them on the surface of cells in display proteins as well as cytosolically. A membrane protein was found, preliminary peptides selected, and a primer design tutorial set up for the following Monday. All this success left us with one very important and so far unanswered question- how exactly are we going to assay all this?" (Team Member Hannah Taylor, Week One Report, 12/06/2012)