Team:Bilkent UNAM Turkey/BBQ Party

From 2011.igem.org

We arranged a BBQ party to introduce our project to the Institute of Material Science and Nanotechnology, under which laboratories we were to carry out our experiments. As all good BBQ parties should, our small picnic began with a presentation of our project proposal. After taking the comments of our advisors, we went to the previously designated picnic area to further discuss the potential problems associated with our ideas... er, I mean we had a lot of fun. Except Alper, who couldn't come because he hadn't been sleeping for days thanks to an experiment that needed sampling in frequent intervals. We ignored him and went anyway, which proved to be a bad decision because he's our editor and can sneak stuff like this in. Anyhow, we carried out a swift roles allocation (which never happened in the actual iGEM project, as our team prides itself on being jacks-of-all-trades.) where a part of the attendees were to start cooking while the rest had the remarkably easy duty of preparing the table and then slacking off while pretending to be hard at work. The cooking team ended up preparing the table too. This often happens. Exhausted from a hard day of napping peacefully under the sun and discussing future experiment prospects, the "table preparation team" (which was one only in name) wolfed down any and all food within their reach while the majority of the cooking team was still, well, cooking. Serving was their duty too. We then played football, volleyball, tug-of-war, dodge-ball and whatever other sports we could think of and had the required ball for. The cooking team got their revenge during this period, because they were lean and hungry and therefore much more athletic than the well-fed, sluggish table team. We took this to be a valuable experience in how the survival values of adaptive traits (like the ability to trick conspecifics into preparing food for oneself) may change depending on the population of conspecifics and therefore the frequency of intraspecific competition. Also, we predict that a small number of "table-teamers" should be present for their trick to remain undetected, this resembles the dynamics of mimicry. In addition, we celebrated the birthday of our advisor Mr. Tekinay’s son! It was an unforgettable experience for us..