Day 1 - Monday, June 13, 2011

• Held a meeting to determine the different administrative roles and tasks that each team member will perform.
• Took inventory of all the supplies in the lab and began organizing our benches.
• Visited a graduate student in Professor Leonard's lab and learned the procedure to make chemically competent cells, which will allow us to begin the transformation process.
• Most of the day was spent on various tasks to get the project up and running, such as setting up the wiki and learning how to autoclave.

Day 2 - Tuesday, June 14 2011

• Obtained some TOP10 cells and plated them to begin the process of producing a stock solution, which will give us a continuous supply of chemically competent cells.
• Used competent cells to begin the transformation process
• Finalized primary idea for project definition and created a timeline
• Continued website design process

Day 3 - Wednesday, June 15 2011

• Neither the transformation nor the stock solution plates showed any growth in the morning. We suspected the LB broth might be the problem because it was the only thing common to both procedures.
• Made new LB Broth and LB plates. After the plates were ready, we attempted the TOP10 stock solution procedure again.
• Lots of brainstorming for secondary project ideas
• Designed biosynthetic mechanism for primary project proposal.

Day 4 - Thursday, June 16 2011

• To our surprise, the original now 2 day old plate was filled with TOP10 colonies. One of the new plates from yesterday was in the incubator overnight and also had growth. Apparently the process just takes longer than we expected and nothing was wrong!
• This allowed us to proceed with making the seed stock. Later in the day, we transferred several single colonies from the plates into LB broth and put them in the shaker overnight.
• The team also continued researching our project and determining an exact method to achieve our goals

Day 5 - Friday, June 17 2011

• We took the seed stock tubes out of the shaker, added gylcerol, aliquoted and stored them in the -80 freezer. We now have a supply of cells ready to be made competent at any time.
• Also continued to finalize the project definition.