Notebook: Week 5
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 for the Week
The Construction Crew are being ambitious this week, and will attempt to transform and purify eight biobricks. These are not from a particular module, but include many of the Promoters we want to use and the Ribosome Binding Site biobrick which failed to work last week. The Modellers wish to model the buoyancy biobricks because they have the most information for this, and using the Groningen 2009 modelling, they have a good idea of how to apply it to our project. They also plan on modelling the laccase gene for the degradation module, which we hope to obtain to transform into our bacteria. The laccase gene is from a strain of bacteria found to degrade polyethylene. Erin is taking a break from modelling to work on the proposal for the Rathenau debate, and hopes to get it in essay format by the end of the week. The Sponsorship team aim to complete their list of potential sponsors to email and create a detailed account of our budget. The key aim for Human Practices is to get a security license for our DIYbio event - without which we may have to downsize the scope of our event, and to confirm guests for our radio show. Our competition Poster is also making progress, and Carina and Aurelija will be meeting this week to ensure its completion. Finally, Rhiannon is aiming to finalise the application for the Transnatural Conference, which is due this week.
Monday
Wet Lab. Using our batch of competent cells, we transformed the seven biobricks today, using the standard protocol. This included mainly promoters required across all of our modules
Poster. Carina arranged to meet Aurelija and Rhiannon this afternoon to discuss the design of the poster. So far we have a background with an artistic representation of the principles of our project, the design of the heading, and a provisional layout of the content.
Modelling. Erin, Joanne and Aurelija continued to work on the degradation equation and GUI, with the particular aim of finding a interactive visual way in which to present the data.
Human Practice - Yeping emailed Jane Calvert from Edinburgh University to get some feedback on the DIYbio event. There is still uncertainty as to whether we will get the permission to proceed with this event, which is unfortunate as it would be a great means of extended Synthetic Biology into the community. Jane Calvert replied that it was a great idea and would certainly add value to the project, which has encouraged us to persist.
Tuesday
Wet Lab: Checking the agar plates have grown after yesterday's transformation. We discovered that only 2 out of the 8 transformations were succesfful combined with the low colony numbers from the previous transformations, we were forced to conclude that our cells have low competence. We are in the process of making new competent cells, and purifing the 2 biobricks that did successfully transform
Yeping and Martina also ran a gel and undertook nanodropping to determine the DNA concentration of the Curli and GFP biobricks transformed last week.
Meeting - Wiki. Rhiannon, Carina and Philipp met to discuss the design and branding of our wiki. We worked mainly on how to represent our project on the homepage. We decided that the homepage should be entry level, and not too focused on the science behind the project. As a result we decided to go for a series of 'infographic' diagrams - each of which answer a different key questions about our project. The default picture will be of our Plastic Republic - the endpoint of our project - and a series of click-through infographics will explain the background of the project and the mechanisms of construction.
Modelling. Aurelija and Joanne continued working on the degradation model and GUI, and Aurelija explored Cell Designer and KAPPA to see how they might be employed in our project. Outcome: Their MATLAB code works but there are problems with their rate equation, so they are going to continue working on that.
Meeting - UCL media. Martina arranged to meet with UCL media about writing an article about out work. Outcome: They have confirmed they will write and article, which hopefully will result in more people getting involved in our project
Wednesday
Training - Leika Light Microscope. We're hoping to produce as many of our results as possible as visual data - to make our data more accessible to people with less experience of science. Steffan trained us how to control the microscope, how to connect it to a computer, and how to capture images of our cells.
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