From 2011.igem.org

Latest revision as of 14:37, 21 September 2011

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 10: 5th September to 11th September

Monday, 5th September

Frank prepared for his talk with Tom Wakeford tomorrow. Nina and Rebekka got started on preparing the poster. Chris loaded the CPEC and discovered that none of them worked. However, the anti-holin PCR worked and infusion should work tomorrow. Nick did a Salkovsky assay but messed up and learned not to leave antibiotics out. Yuanwei put up the new AuxIn logo, changed the colour scheme, removed the count down on the front page and uploaded the chemotaxis animation. Ming prepared auxin at different concentrations and watered the plants. Nikki helped other people out with lab stuff and wrote loads of emails.

Tuesday, 6th September

Today Nina and I fixed the wiki for the Chemotaxis modelling. Yuanwei rearranged the team page and change the skin color for the whole wiki. Frank arranged an interview with Tom Wakeford, he also prepared the script for a play to be acted out on radio iGEM with Chris. Apart from visiting CJ’s house for preparing the workshop, Chris did the infusion again and transformed super-folded-GFP. Rebekka transformed cells with GFP and continued Kiran's experiment. She also did a bit of work on the poster. Ming helped us do some research on modelling, watered plant in the afternoon and learned the image J programme. Nick characterised the auxin part, however it failed, therefore he transformed the auxin fragment again. Nikki run a gel of RFP colonies and did GFP-PCR. Two of her super-folded-GFP-PCRs worked, so she was able to move on to digestion and purification and also did that for holin. She also put the sequence on the wiki and emailed the seed coat expert.

Wednesday, 7th September

Frank started making videos and recording for radio iGEM. But unfortunately, his laptop broke down today probably due to overworking and he has to spend much time reformatting his laptop. Chris did more infusion. In addition, he digested the plasmid in preparation for the anti-holin. He also did the PCR which he tried very hard to image. Birthday girl, Nikki, did colony PCR but it did not work. Nonetheless, we had a mini celebration and enjoyed the delicious cake from her mum. Chris and Nikki also had a discussion with Lisa regarding the project presentation at the jamboree. Nick uploaded some amazing experiment pictures on to the wiki. He spent his time transforming auxin cells and also went to SBL to get the machine ready. He got some valuable feedback on how to characterise the promoters. Rebecca was busy contacting the professors and organising the human practice panel for the next day. Besides transforming more cells, she also started to make some design for the radio iGEM logo. Ming spent his day working on the registry and most sequence has been completed. He also did more on his soil erosion experiment by preparing more auxin concentrations and collecting more data. Si wrote up the modelling bit for gene guard on to the wiki. She also contacted the South African iGEM team for collaboration on the chemotaxis modelling. A meeting with Dr Guy-Bart Stan was also arranged to check the model for auxin production. Yuanwei tidy up the wiki and included the quotes section. He has also started working on the engineering cycle animation.

Thursday, 8th September

Today is an important day since we have a human practise panel with the scientific-sociological experts from LSE and Greenpeace. In the morning, Rebekka and Nikki prepared for the panel which turned out to be extremely successful and we covered more of the points we will need to consider for our project's human practise. Thank you very much. Apart from that, everybody is working at their hardest. Our modelling team Si and Nina draw gene guard graphs. Si discusses auxin production model with Malcom Benette, modeling expert. She also collaborates with the South African team in order to help them with the modeling of toggle or ribo-switch. Nina continues making our poster template and it looks awesome. Yuanwei is making the first cycle of engineering cycle in the wiki and is also redrawing the MCPs pathway for Nick. Frank is setting up camera for filming and putting up our own radio igem show on the wiki. WOOHOO !!! Chris is carrying on the miniprepping, dpN1 digest, PCR amplify and nanodrop of holin and endolysin, while Nikki is carrying out her Salkovski which turns to work with the non-filtered cells which might result from no change in the pH to stop E. coli production of auxin. Nick is setting up dendra2, GFP, and RFP cultures that were transformed yesterday. He also carried on the characterisation of dendra2. Apart from preparing for the human practise panel, Rebekka also grew up bacteria for continuing the soil experiment. Finally Ming continued working on the part registry, preparing more auxin solutions at standard concentrations for watering the plants and gathering the second data set in the soil erosion experiment.

Friday, 9th September

The day started off well, as Chris discovered that his Infusion attempt had worked. Unfortunately, Chris' joy was short-lived as he realised that he would have to spend the rest of the day doing colony PCR. Nikki, who was lucky enough to escape the burden of colony PCR, spent her day working on the Salkowski reagent for the detection of Auxin. Nick continued in his pursuit of the perfect capillary assay for chemotaxis, and also found time to begin analysing the data from his FACS experiments. Meanwhile, down in the Drylab Dungeon, Yuanwei worked on an animation to illustrate our Gene Guard module, before he was forced to leave to pick up his visa. Si recorded another video of her model in action, as well as designing and coding a model for the CSIR-WITS_SA team, with whom we are collaborating. Nina began designing the poster that we would take to the jamboree, as well as expressing her artistic side with an animation for the chemotaxis module.