Team:UC Chile/Cyano/Notepad/brainstorming

Brainstorming

In this section we write about other project ideas that for practical reasons were discarded. These are really great ideas and we encourage future iGEM teams to take a look at them and design awesome iGEM winner project with them.

The brainstorming was a little bit tricky at first, but we managed to get pretty awesome ideas out of it.

The first day of work (Jan 2nd) we started proposing lots of ideas but they were not fully conceptualized.

After the first day the list ended up as follows:

- Combination of electronics with biology.
- Bacterias able to "speak". Some that produce sound and others that "listen".
- Bacterias stimulated by sound.
- Copper recolection. Bacterias that can absorb copper and then a gas vesicle (part in kit) makes them float. Easy to recolect.
- Plants that can fix nitrogen.
- Photosynthetic yeast.
- Red tide detector (red tide is a common phenomenon that affects our coasts)
- Hawaian Coli (sun burn protector)
- Oil absorbing bacteria.
- Conversion of sea water into drinkable water.
- Smog clean up bacteria.
- Biolumiscence
- Protein purification by magnetosome
- Make electricity from light
- Heat producing bacteria
- Directed evolution
- Switcheable dynamic systems
- Bacterial thermometer
- Cure for Chagas disease (very frequent in Chile).

From all the previous thoughts only the sound induced bacteria was investigated in depth. Emilia, who proposed the idea, presented a brief "potential project" description during the week. Also, during Tuesday (day 2) another great idea came up: a bacteria capable of memory, learning and conditioning (pretty ambitious ha)

Finally, three ideas made it to Friday's meeting with the professor in charge of us, Rodrigo. These were:

- Artificial intelligence bacteria
- Bioelectronic interaction
- Copper device
- Toxin dectector
Here you can check the full presentation.

Because the first days of January we were still in the phase "getting to know each other" and the interaction between team members was not 100% awesome (yet), we had a "building up team spirit" session with psychology student Daniela Restovic on Wednesday (3rd day). It was imperative to have a powerful and guided brainstorming. We decided to do it on Saturday while drinking beer and having a nice barbecue at Pollak's place.

Saturday. During the "meeting".... after a few drinks and a full belly we began our brainstorming. Daniela guided us with the ball toss brainstorming technique: there were several colored balls in a basket, each representing a type of idea: yellow was crazy, blue was logical, red was risky and so on. The fundament of the exercise is that the person might feel more comfortable sharing his/her thoughs by "speaking through the ball".

At first we started saying anything that came to our minds and we ended up with a decent poster. Afterwards, we rank the ideas and started to relate different concepts in the poster. The day was finally over and we left the last stage (turning loose ideas into a full sentence) for Monday 9.

On Monday we could manage to get:

- Solar panel.
- Bioelectronics interface
-Synthetic ecosystem
- Repelent bacteria
- CSI (bacterias for forensic investigations)
- Thermic bacterias
- Synthetic organelles
- Reactor
- GPS
- Climate biosensor
- Dynamic biopainting
- Chilean natural resources
- Optimization
- Biomaterials

During the rest of the week, the team investigated all the possible projects and presented some of them to a "board" of experts in the field: the doctorate students who kindly agreed to give us feedback. Basically what they said:

- Dynamic biopainting (change colours over time). It could be used to cover building frontages as a new design trait.

Great idea. Our advisors were very enthuastic about it. Although there are some basic problems we need to adressed: the matrix that will contain the bacterias has to be able to regulate nutrient flux and growth of E. coli's. And, what happens when the matrix is saturated?? Also, colours need to be degraded to let others show, that way we can achieve image dynamism. Paint temperature must be regulated.

Suggestions: a canvas with temperature or UV stimuli in it. Highly unstable proteines could be used to mimic colour degradation.

- Synthetic compartmentalization (synthetic organelles).

Truth to be told, our advisors showed much more reluctance about this idea.

Problems: cell might not recognize the new organelle. The stability of the system could collapse. How can the new organelle be inherited through cell division?? And, what methabolic pathway is going to be designed? what substrate? and once the metabolite is synthesized what to do with it?

Suggestions: the amount of light can be regulated to identify moments when efficiency is augmented. With urgency: create a symbiosis between yeast and cyanobacteria (organelle).

- Bioelectronics interface. Bacterioacoustic (The sound is first converted to a magnetic field which can induce bacteria and for example obtain a movement output using the magnetosome tool kit).

Problems: how resolutive can be the magnetic stimulation?

Suggestions: bacteria culd be stimulated by different wave lengths, although motility would be very slow.

- Biomaterials:

The process to create a new material is very slow. You would need to find the material, modulate (with light, O2, UV light) and then make a 3D prototype.

As all Fridays we talked to Rodrigo about our advacement. He told us to lower the amount of ideas and work each one more in depth.

Presentation n° 2. (some slides are in Spanish)

As the lab environment was turning detrimental for our creativity (no windows and artificial light), we had one last brainstorming session at Simon's. Finally we made a choice for two ideas: Lux Brick under circadian rhytm in synechocystis (Biolamp) and a material highly resistant, flexible and indestructible (Mithril made from bacteria).

The last day of work (Tuesday 24) we presented these ideas to Rodrigo and with his approval we finally were free to go on vacation.

Final presentation.

** What was consciously omitted: there was an idea that came up between round and round of beer at Pollak's. Carla stated that she liked dragons, and well, it turned out that all team members shared her liking. And also everyone liked beer. So, what would happen if these two were combined? a dragon that instead of breathing fire breathes beer: a BEERDRAGON.


The project was conceptualized, constructs were designed, and a komodo dragon was ordered from Sumatra (in order to be genetically engineered). The thing was that during the journey, once it crossed the wall to get to us (remember we live beyond the wall), the wagon that carry it was attacked by white walkers who fed from the dragon and converted it into a wight. Now its dead corpse haunts us on cold days. As we had already made the payment and there was no refund on "being eaten by white walkers" we did not have enough money to order another dragon and the beerdragon project was dropped. Nevertheless, we did not want to forget the awesome idea and kept the name "beerdragons" as team name.

Disclaimer: there are many references to the song of ice and fire books (on TV is game of thrones). If you are not familiarized with the story and really want to understand the jokes, we recommend you to visit :

A Wiki of Ice and Fire for more information.