Team:Acton-BoxboroughRHS/Notebook

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First Few Weeks

In the first few weeks, we had introduced iGEM to students, taken sneek-peeks on projects done by past iGEM teams, done a banana lab and small exercises. The banana lab was a test lab to see how different modified E. coli would produce a banana smell from an inserted banana enzyme gene. One example of a demonstration was modelling the process of producing a plasmid of recombinant DNA with restriction enzymes and ligase using pipe cleaners, candies, labels and scissors.

Up to February 26 2014

Our team has done some moderate research on final topics. The final project will be picked soon.

These are a list of the possible candidates:

1. Fat/sugar/protein converter
2. Genetically produced fuel/BioDeisel
3. Kopi Luwak Coffee
4. Bacteria that absorbs CO2/fossil fuel by product/catalytic converter
5. Skin regenerating Bacteria
6. Bacteria with memory/synthetic neurons
7. Synthetic/modified mitochondria or chloroplast

February 27 2014 Narrowing it down.

1. Genetically produced fuel/BioDeisel
2. Kopi Luwak Coffee (COLI Luwak Coffee)
3. Bacteria with memory/synthetic neurons / Battery?

March 6 2014

Final Decision by the Team: Kopi Luwak Coffee (project name is E. COLI Luwak)

March 12 2014

Our team has officially designated team members to certain tasks for the project. These Include:

1. The team wiki
2. Research on Kopi Luwak project
3. Working on the 3A assembly kit for genetic recombination

After this meeting, we carried out the 3A assembly protocol twice (see protocols 1-5 in lab tab). We did not achieve growth on the chloramphenicol plates either time, possibly due to our failure to properly freeze the competent cells.

April 17 2014

Our team is finishing up the 3A Assembly Lab for the second time. We have decided to plan certain agendas:

1. We need to finish the 3A assembly lab.
2. We need to make an official notebook for our actual Project progress.
3. We need to investigate the past two 3A labs for errors, and mistakes to fix in the future.

May 1 2014

Our team has received the DNA Distribution Plate Kits from iGEM which contain various DNA sequences (for enzymes, promoters, etc) on plasmids that we can use for our project. We have decided to initially use the following according to our project:

1. Pepsin
2. Amylase (salivary and pancreatic)
3. Trypsin (trypsin and chymotripsin)

We also have the Standard Registry of Biological Parts by iGEM to research more possible parts.

May 8 2014

Our team has focused on several things this meeting:

1. The iGEM Jamboree Fee
2. Our Project-lab Notebook
3. More on the parts we will use- very few of the original parts are in the catalog
4. More frequent meeting dates!

We plan to generate money to help pay for the Jamboree fee by having a bake sale. Also, we will find and research every single part we will need to use, including regulatory parts such as promoters, operators, etc and devise a specific plan for the project-lab, for which we keep an official physical notebook.

May 15 2014

Today we assigned specific iGEM parts for research:

1. RBS
2. Promoters
3. Terminator
4. Pepsin and Amylase
5. The DNA backbone

We have put aside the idea of using trypsin as one of our enzymes since it has a complex process for forming its shape or conformation with multiple genes. Furthermore, we need to work on transferring our vast amounts of research from paper to the site, and the safety page. We have additionally working on our idea of a fundraiser bake-sale, and decided to meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

May 22 2014

Today we integrated information about our research on the type of part, and specific parts. We will officially decide what parts to order by next Tuesday.

May 29 2014

Today we clarified a few deadlines including the abstract, the ordering of the parts, the registration of the Jamboree, and the safety tab, as well as the detailed planning for the lab.

June 5 2014

The following deadlines were clarified:

• The iGEM wiki freeze at June 20.
• The iGEM poster.
• The iGEM registration finalizations.

We will have our lab during next week, for amylase in E. coli. Also, Safety, Simulations, Research, Lab and Team tag websites need to be updated.

June 10 2014

Today, the High Efficiency lab (see lab tab) lab was started and finished using part BBa_K523006 for alpha amylase. This lab failed, leading to the conclusion that our competent cells had not been properly maintained and were no longer effective. We also plan to have a Google Hangout on thursday, since many people are busy. The following topics were discussed and worked on.

• The iGEM wiki (Research Tab update, Home page, Team page, etc.)
• The iGEM poster.
• The iGEM possible T-shirts

Testing the bacteria with beans (or cherries), needs to take place as well.

June 16 2014

Due to the failure of the High Efficiency lab, we performed a new procedure: the Main Project Lab (see lab tab). This procedure does not rely on the competent cells, but instead uses CaCl2 to catalyze transformation. We did not see any growth the next day, but we had some leftover cells that we had not put on the plates. These leftovers were plated in the hope that they had transformed, but they had not.

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