Diary

This is our diary page which records the daily activities of the team. Click on the links below to see a summary of events and activities happening each week.

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Week 7: 15th August to 21st August

Monday, 15th August

Write here

Tuesday, 16th August

The day started off great! All the transformations from the previous day worked great and the gibson reaction seems to have worked (we have colonies of bacteria on the plate). The rest of the day was really productive. The primers for the containment module assembly (name pending) have been made and ordered. Mini-preps were performed on the newly transformed cells followed by restriction digests, M9 media plates were poured for chemotaxis experiments that have been set off, the implementation of our system was worked on extensively, animations were made, more bacteria were transformed, the modelers made awesome models of Arabidopsis root growth and finally we had a Skype date with the team of University of the Witwatersrand on chemotaxis assays yielded valuable fruits for both of our teams as we exchanged knowledge on chemotaxis assays. This list only scratches the surface of all that was done today.

Wednesday, 17th August

Today was a bad day to be a modeller. After days of frustration they finally concluded that their model for the effects of auxin concentration would not work. They are currently working on some new ideas for the modelling, including an extrapolation of Ming's root growth data and a program that takes 8 days to run on a supercomputer! Chris and Frank entertained themselves (and nobody else) with Radio iGEM, an online podcast that, this week, featured a brief introduction to our project, an interview with Ming the plant specialist and some questionable songs. This was in addition to mini-prepping and a restriction digest. Nick spent his day setting up his chemotaxis assays and learning how to use the FACs machine, it doesn't sound like much, but poor Nick didn't have a chance to sit down today. Nikki was also rushed off her feet, loading gels, doing gel extractions, a transformation and the next gibson. Rebekka ploughed on with Kiran's experiments and set up the materials for when we start using B. subtilis. Also, Rebekka has worms, and she'll start the experiments soon. CJ from the RCA was here too, she helped us write stuff on the wiki and is going to find us some cool people to interview for Radio iGEM. The plan is to have a podcast based debate on the practicality of our project and GM technology in general. She and Chris are also putting together a short narrative to accompany the project that we will record with a team of voice actors and put on Radio iGEM.

Thursday, 18th August

Our worms laid eggs! We plan to name the survivors. Modeling:-
- chemotaxis and kill switch(Bactrap) done - plan - data fitting for modeling of auxin control - Yuanwei started looking at flash animation for our game Ming:- - experiment of soil erosion Nikki:- - gel extract - auxin fragments - ran Gibson assembly - improvement on safety questions Frack:- - cloning strategy - help Chris with primers Rebekka:- - human practice platform - meet up with two people in september - plates of E.coli and B.subtilis Chris:- - digestion - primers - Gibson assembly Nick:- -play with worms (- -#) everyone prepares the slide for the presentation on Friday

Friday, 19th August