Notebook: Week 7
Preparations | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13 | Week 14 | Week 15 | Week 16
Aims of the Week
This week, 6 of our team members of going to the CAM conference in Munich, where they will be presenting our project at the poster session. They will also meet with the LMU Munich iGEM team to discuss a collaboration. This has been a really exciting event for the team, in particular the modellers who are keen to collaborate, as we have been talking with the Munich team on skype for several weeks. Remaining in London are most of the lab team, who want to get our important biobricks transformed and commence 3A assembly. Rhiannon intends to finish updating the Research pages of the wiki; in particular she is working on the overview and design pages, as well as developing some research diagrams. Philipp also is aiming to get some wiki programming done, so we can start including some of the features we have designed. Yeping will be contacting the Southbank centre in order to discuss organising a Public Engagement event, and will continue discussing safety with London Hackspace regarding the DIYbio streetlab. Carina will be working on the physical model of our island for the Human Practice event at Southbank, where members of the public can themselves help construct the island using plastic. She also aims to have a more specified idea of the architectural side of the project after a meeting with the team on Friday.
Monday 23rd July
Wet Lab - In the lab today, Leonard transformed the TetR promoter (BBa_C0040) for Expt 7.1. Rhiannon and Yeping set up a restriction digest for K540000, I13522, K123003, and K398108 for Expt 7.2. A gel revealed that all except K123003 had been successful.
Meeting - Human Practice. Yeping and Martina met with Mike Hughes from Gureilla Sciences. He had useful suggestions of how to make DIYbio more engaging, and had some useful contacts that may be able to help us with speed debating. He also passed on some tips on how to engage/approach people on the street for South bank project.
Meeting - Collaboration. Bouran meets with Henrik Cordes, Darmstadt, discuss potential for collaboration - agree expression of degradative component in Roseo and characteristaion.
Modelling - Talked to iGEM Bielefield, who are using the same enzyme in their degradation module, about their strategies for modelling and any limitations they are experiencing.
Human Practice - Radio Show. Bouran, Bethan and Philipp held a short interview with Eriko Takano following her presentation on 'Synthetic Biology of Antibiotic Production' for our radio program.
Tuesday 24th July
Wet Lab - In the lab today, Leonard transformed the TetR promoter. Rhiannon and Yeping set up a restriction digest for K540000, I13522, K123003, and K398108. A gel revealed that all except K123003 had been successful. Rhiannon and Yeping also picked colonies from J23119, I750016, ,B0015, and B0034 for an overnight culture.
We also received the good news of a potential collaboration with a research group who have a strain of bacteria we require for its Laccase gene.
Meeting - Primers - Leonard and James met with our supervisor Darren to discuss our primer design before an order is set through. This proved very useful, and they have taken the necessary steps to redesign the primers before they are sent off.
Meeting - Skype to the rest of team at Munich Conference - we caught up with the rest of the team this afternoon, and were pleased to find our project had been received very positively at the poster presentation. We also caught up on the key targets for the next few weeks, to ensure members of the Lab Team continue progress with Human Practice, while the rest of the team is away.
Meeting - Darmstadt. Discussion with Darmstadt about the modelling strategies.
Human Practice - Radio Show. Bethan, Bouran and Philipp held an interview with Brynne Stanton of the Voigt Lab, MIT.
Wednesday 25th July
Meeting - Darmstadt. Bouran discussed a possible characterisation collaboration with Henrik from iGEM TU Darmstadt. We are considering if it would be possible to express their degradation module in Roseobacter and characterise it with our techniques to give them an alternative perspective. We will follow up after the Munich conference via Skype.
Modelling Joanne and Aurelija worked on modelling presentation for the workshop we are hosting for Munich on Thursday. They also discussed possible modelling collaboration with TU Munich, who will be present at modelling workshop on Thursday.
Human Practice - Visit to Hackspace. Yeping and Martina went to discuss our health and safety to concrete our plans for events.
Human Practice - Radio Show. Bouran, Bethan and Philipp held a short interview with Alfred Nordmann and Jay Keasling
Human Practice - Rathenau Debate. Erin has almost finished writing her paper, but needs to shorten it.
Friday
Wet Lab: Today we checked the results of the transformation for EXPT 7.4, and were pleased to find growth for the Gas Vesicle Gene Cluster (BBa_I750016) but disappointed to find contamination of the negative control - and also, judging by the appearance, the Tetracycline Repressor (BBa_C0040).
Press Bethan sent some emails out to Science Magazines to the raise the profile of the events we are running over the next few weeks, including the upcoming speed debating and DIYbio.
"
