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Team:Kyoto/Diary
From 2011.igem.org
Diary
Week1: Monday 1st - Sunday 7th August
Some members visited Todaiji-Gakuen high school(東大寺学園) to lecture about iGEM and our research. A lot of students participated in our lecture and they seemed to get interested in biochemistry and iGEM. Their pure curiosity reminded us of our past high school days and we re-realized the interests of science.
Team Capture started breeding flies. The flies(Drosophila Melanogaster) were provided by Professor Fuse.
One of the biggest fire festivals in Japan was held in Osaka, south of Kyoto. Fire festivals are the seasonal tradition in summer in our country. We enjoyed the beautiful theater on the night sky.
Week2: Monday 8th - Sunday 14th August
Tuesday
August 9, 1945, a atmic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. And 2011, Japan again has a problem of nuclear. However, the situation is completely different from 76years ago, because now we have a lot of friends all over the world!
Week3: Monday 15th - Sunday 21th August
Tuesday
Today, August 16, is a very important day for the people living in Kyoto, because the historical fire festival called 'Gozan-no-Okuribi' is held. The original purpose of this festival is to pray for the deceased. Just five months ago, about 20,000 people died in the devastating earthquake and tunami. And so many people are still struggling to live in the affected area. Moreover, the situation of Fukushima is also totally unresolved. This disaster robbed us of a lot of precious memories, lovers, and peaceful daily lives. However, at the same time, it reminded us of the importance of the bonding with friends or families, and also gave us the good opportunity to rethink about nuclear power plants. Now, all we can do is to do our best for the recovery.
We would like express our heartfelt gratitude to all countries which gave helps to Japan, and would like to pray silently for the victims.
Rakunan high school is the second place we visited for the lecture of Human Practice. The number of the participants were small compared with the first lecture at Todaiji-Gakuen, but the students listened hard to our lecture.
Team Capture assembled the first experimental system to research the phototaxis of flies. However, the response of flies was not clear and we could not get respectable results. It seems that we have to improve the way to experiment.
Week4: Monday 22th - Sunday 28th August
Team Capture made improvements on the first experimental system, and assembled this Y-shaped maze. The behavior of fly was observed more easily and more clearly than the first one.
Week5: Monday 29th August - Sunday 4th September
Monday
Today, the important meeting of iGEM Japan was held at Kyoto University, our home. The participating universities were the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Osaka University, and us, Kyoto University. Each participants made presentation on the progress of their projects, and discussed each others very animatedly. After the presentation, we enjoyed a nice party! During this party, we could forget the fatigue of researching and felt refreshed.
Tuesday
The weekly meeting
Kusaba, leader of group luminescence, is looking for some good references about phototaxis of Drosophila and insects.
Week6: Monday 5th September - Sunday 11th September
Tuesday
Team Capture started the improved experiment of fly. Flies were not active enough in the last experiment, so we decided to use the young flies 3 or 4 days old.
On 18:30, the weekly meeting started. After we verified progress situation of each groups, discussed about the wiki editing.
Wednesday
This morning, adviser Kashima conducted a lecture about RT-PCR for the beginners. The member of iGEM Kyoto 2011 is consisting mainly of sophomores and freshmen, so these lectures are very helpful and absolutely necessary for us. Thank you, Kashima-san(Mr.Kashima)!
Week7: Monday 12th September - Sunday 18th September
Monday
Our activity to promote iGEM as a part of Human Practice is not limited in Kansai area. Today, we visited Tokyo and lecutred Hibiya high school students.
Week8: Monday 19th September - Sunday 25th September
Tuesday
A huge typhoon is coming to Kyoto! Strong wind blow away bicycles, heavy rain will not stop, and rivers are almost overflowing!! Are we OK?
Week9: Monday 26th September - Sunday 2nd October
Saturday
I（Komatsu） and Kato visited rakusei high school.
I was glad that I could discuss about biochemistry and synthetic biology with their teacher. When I returned to my home, I realized that dead-line was gradually approaching, but there were so many thing we must do.
Week10: Monday 3rd October - Sunday 9th October
Monday
We melted chocolate and added powdered tea.
