Team:NYC Wetware/Notebook/Summary

We began our weekly meetings in late February to start brainstorming ideas for out iGEM project.. In order to accommodate all our team members, who were spread out in Universities all across NYC, we set up video conferencing between Weill Cornell Medical College and Yeshiva University.

Team members began pouring over the literature on everything to do with Deinococcus Radiodurans, our model organism for radioactive resistance. Through consultation with our faculty mentors and D. rad experts, we recognized that Deinococcus has three unique pathways for protecting itself against radiation: (1) regulation of cellular Mn/Fe rations, (2) oxidative damage shielding, and (3) special mechanisms of DNA repair. We chose to attack all three. By isolating the genes relevant to each one and cloning them into E. coli, we planned on conferring D. rad's extreme resistance mechanisms to E. coli.

The push to Biobrick radioresistance in the Cornell lab space began at the end of May when Jake, David, and Yossi finished up their semesters.