The iGEM Team of University of Southern Denmark 2012 igem.sdu.2012@gmail.com

Diary

Here is our diary. This is where we have written about meetings and highlights during the process.

31.01.12:

The first part of the team was created.

09.02.12:

Supervisor meeting

28.02.12:

Official information meeting about iGEM 2012

Some of our advisors met with everyone interested in joining this years team to tell us about iGEM and how to join the team.

15.03.12:

The final team participants were decided.

17.03.12:

Information meeting for the participants

Two of our advisors had a meeting with us to talk about our previous experiences and our expectations.

19.03.12:

The first meeting with only team members.

We talked about scheduling and organization. It was important for us to have a common communication platform that is easy to use and works well with several users. We decided that Facebook would work for now, for discussions and announcements, and Google Docs/Drive for documents. For scheduling meetings we decided to use Doodle.
In addition, we also discussed different subjects for our project, talked about the teams expectations and how to help each other.

29.03.12:

iGEM team registration accepted and registration fee paid.

31.03.12:

Registration of team members individually

09.04.12:

Team Meeting

We discussed and limited our subjects and problems. We talked about the wiki site and how we would like it to look.

16.04.12:

Team Meeting

Talking and discussing the different topics. We voted for the best topic and began a discussion about how it should be approached.

24.04.12:

Team Meeting

Project organization. The team met to discuss our subjects before meeting with our supervisors. We tried to limit our subject choices. When our supervisors joined the meeting, we did a round of “meet and greet” between the participants and the supervisors. Afterwards, we did a short presentation for the supervisors of our chosen subjects. We decided that the aim of our next meeting should be to decide on our final subject for the project. The team members all chose an idea they wanted to present for the rest of the team so that we could make our decision. Team Bielefeld-Germany asked whether or not we would like to be sparring team with them, which we of course said yes to. We also plan to visit them during the summer.

26.04.12:

Team Building :)

We gathered for a night of pizza, fun and games!

29.04.12:

Symposium

We had presentations from previously iGEM contestants who informed us about the iGEM concept and synthetic biology.

07.05.12:

Team Meeting

We finally agreed on a subject for our project; A bacteria that can convert sugar to a fiber the human body cannot absorb. Making it easier to lose or not gain weight. During the meeting we also did a distribution of different tasks, such as choosing who would be responsible for various groups such as funding, lab work, the podcast with Cornell etc. We also divided the team into these subdivisions: A funding group, a wiki group, a podcast group and a group that would stay in touch with the iGEM team from Bielefeld, Germany.

14.05.12:

Team Meeting

We discussed why obesity is such a huge problem and how we could design our project to solve this problem. We agreed to make a bacteria that can survive in our stomach and transform sugar to inulin. the human body can't absorb inulin and furthermore inulin have a positive effect on the already existing `good` bacteria we have in our stomach. Besides this, we also had an update from the groups of their whereabouts and achievements.

24.05.12:

Meeting with our supervisors

We talked about BioBrick techniques and what kind of materials we would need in the lab. We discussed how to proceed with the funding and when & how to get started in the lab.
Later that day, the team had an iGEM BBQ!

31.05.12:

Team Meeting

Not all of the team members were able to be at the meeting, so it was decided to do a detailed plan for the next meeting instead. We made some changes in our project description and end goal, because our original one was pretty similar to a team from an earlier year.

05.07.12:

First day in the lab!

See our "Notebook" under "Lab Work"