Team:Jefferson VA SciCOS/Notebook

October 2013 – January 2014 We started raising awareness of the iGEM competition in the TJHSST community by discussing the competition during weekly meetings of Synthetic Biology Society and delivering lectures on basic concepts of synthetic biology, such as transcription and translation, synthetic biology terminology, and methods of assembly to construct a part. We required that all members of Synthetic Biology Society who were interested in joining the iGEM team submit a proposal for the 2014 project by December 15th. We selected six of those proposals for advanced consideration and invited the members who submitted the proposals to join the 2014 iGEM team. We also received the One Question Grant during November, for which we had to conduct an outreach program.

January 2014 – February 2014 We finalized the idea for our project this year: the construction of a 4-node bacterial computer that solves the Traveling Salesman Problem. We reviewed about ten ideas submitted by members of Synthetic Biology Society, which dealt with topics as diverse as an insulin regulation system for the human body and a ciguatoxin poison attenuator, before we settled on this idea. We felt that it was the most feasible project to complete with the resources in the TJHSST lab and provided abundant opportunities to backtrack if a component was not functioning properly. Moreover, due to the combinatorial nature of the problem we were attempting to solve, we believed it had the most potential in terms of mathematical modeling. We also received a generous donation of $1000 from Dr. Brian Becker of Precision Economics, LLC during the month of February.

February 2014 – March 2014 As part of our outreach program, the Mini-Jamboree, we conducted prep lab sessions during meetings of Synthetic Biology Society. The prep labs were intended as a way to introduce freshmen and sophomores to the Biotechnology Lab and to basic research techniques so that they may be able to formulate their own research ideas with ease. The prep labs were based on the protocols that we received from iGEM headquarters. Although the end goal of the prep labs was to create a part that fluoresces red through the transformation of control RFP, we were not able to do the restriction digest or ligation with the participants due to the erratic weather on the east coast this year. Instead, we first taught the students antiseptic techniques, how to grow bacteria on plates, and how to make these plates using agar powder, distilled water, antibiotic solution, and an autoclave. As we neared the end of March, we taught them a transformation protocol using competent cells we had already purchased from New England Bio Labs.