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 expresses their enthusiasm to support Team St Andrews. Members of the group are provided with CLC bio Main Workbenches.

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!