Achievements

Team Accomplishments

This year, we tried to further develop the project from last year. The new factor was our support came from the new bioclub rather than the research class. Many of our team could not attend this year, so we decided to be a virtual team (our first year going virtual).

1. We are fortunate to have contact with a research mentor to guide and lead us through this process while Dr. Fenton is also being introduced to synthetic biology.


2. We have added two new parts relating to energy production to the registry for which few protein coding sequences exist. This link provides information showing the protein coding sequences. Now we have increased the available parts relating to energy production by 20%.


3. Our team has learned the protocol for site-directed mutagenesis and for PCRing prefix and suffix to parts.


4. This year we are extending the Hawaii team's work with cyanobacteria. We are using cyanobacteria as a chassis which is a unique one; most teams work with E. coli. Cyanobacteria is not even in the chassis registry, as shown in this link


5. One of our team members, Mason, has learned to use Tinker Cell to show the pathway of glycolysis to alkane production.

For the Judges

1. The wiki this year is more dynamic relative to last year's wiki. There are extensive code editing and features that are more appealing.


2. This year we used a modeling program called Tinker Cell. It shows a step-by-step pathway from glycolysis to alkane production.


3. The new parts that we added to the registry, Rabbit Muscle and Yeast PK, are natural. They are important in tackling possibly the world's most important problem which is clean sustainable energy.


4. Three of our team members helped teach a middle school bioscience camp again! This year the camp expanded to two sessions reaching to 50 kids. We taught them DNA extraction, bacterial transformation, micropipetting, gel electrophoresis and more.


5. To spread the word of our work, we have created a Twitter account, CAPS iGEM, and a Facebook page, CAPS iGEM. We have also created a Facebook group, High School iGEM 2014, for everyone to join. This Facebook group is designed to communicate, share, and socialize amongst all the other teams during the iGEM jamboree!