Team:OLS Canmore AB CA/Timeline

Timeline

Below is a timeline of major events; but, it does not include descriptions of all the other hours of work that has been put into this project. If you wish to see a log of all other work conducted you can view the google doc by clicking here (add hyperlink to google doc when we are done logging work so we can change settings from “everyone with link can edit” to “everyone with link can view”.

	June 2nd	Over the weekend, we learnt that we would be presenting our project to the town council here in Canmore. For this, four team members will be missing some school next Tuesday to inform the town council about our project. Website write-ups for outreach, ethics, and lab work, along with poster design were discussed.
	May 30th	This Friday afternoon was devoted to running a miniprep and working on our presentation. For the presentation, our powerpoint was edited and we know have a couple different drafts from which we will pick our best. Then, the only thing left to do in regards to the powerpoint is to fine-tune all the small details. The miniprep was done to separate the plasmid DNA from the E.coli (DH5a) the parts had been sent in. Single colonies had been plucked from the plates we had streaked earlier on, which were then used to conduct the miniprep.
	May 26th	During this team meeting, team members split into groups for ethics, editing our powerpoint for the jamboree, working on a poster, making a survey to test smell, making DIY videos for the powerpoint, and putting instructions for our "home-made" equipment on Instructables. The different teams will meet up during the week and present their progress at a team meeting on Friday.
	May 24th	Today was our last geekstarter-funded workshop day. However, this day was different from our other workshops since all teams from around Alberta met for a mock-jamboree at the University of Calgary. The morning was spent presenting projects to everyone and during the afternoon, each group received feedback on their presentations.
	May 13th	Planning out the next couple weeks was the focus of this team meeting. We also arranged meetings after school to work on our 20 minute-long presentation for the Jamboree. Our rational for working on the presentation early is that we have a practice presentation day in Calgary on the 24th of May. The next thing on the agenda was to discuss website content: namely, writing about what we have done so far for DIY projects, human practices, ethics, and biosafety.
	May 9th	We were hoping to have our DNA for Friday but unfortunately, we will only have it around Monday. Instead of starting a restriction digest with the two parts, we inoculated two plates with bacteria we will use as competent cells later on. Everyone else worked on outreach, fundraising, and starting the poster and presentation.
	May 5th	First on the agenda for the meeting today was to review results from our lab work on Saturday. (We had successfully grown E.coli that light up red!) Next, came talking about a workshop on May 24th. This workshop is a practice for our MIT presentation, where we will have the chance to present to some professors--largely professors from Calgary. After this was done, we moved on to counting the colonies that had grown on our plates.
	May 2nd	After a week-long break it was time for us to start working on our construct. For this reason, today was a lab day. We streaked out some DH5 Alpha plates for when we have to transform our cells, and we streaked out some cells for the two parts we are using. Some time was also spent writing up a summary for all the DIY work we did, and we did some research regarding ethics. Let's not forget that some people also worked on finding somewhere to get team t-shirts printed.
	April 13th	This mentor day, our second of the year, was very productive. At the beginning of the day the team split into three groups. The first group worked on making new LB-agar plates with different antibiotic resistance. The different antibiotic resistances include ampicillin, kanamycin, and chloramphenicol. Once this team was done making plates it moved on to make liquid LB broth and to streak Part A (J04500) and Part B (J04650) on the new agar plates. The second team worked on a restriction digest for most of the day. The third team made some agarose gel for when we run an agarose gel electrophoresis. Then they, actually ran a gel electrophoresis. The day ended with everyone discussing the exact steps of putting together the two parts we selected to form our final construct.
	April 11th	After looking at the agar we had streaked yesterday we found out that no bacteria had grown. Because of this we were not able to get ahead with our practice run, which consisted of assembling two different parts together. Talia, Alina, Freya worked in the lab today with Mrs. Puurunen to go through the protocol again. They also stayed after school to work on ethics and human practices. This work included preparing a presentation for younger grades at our school and contacting people to talk about bioethics.
	April 10th	Today was the first day of lab work. Jeremiah, Carter, Tully, and Mrs. Puurunen streaked part A and part B from our 3A assembly kit onto the agar. They also autoclaved some of pipette tips.
	April 7th	Today, many of the team members were busy volunteering at our school's hot dog sale. The students that remained worked on fundraising and human practices. We also discussed finishing our website biographies and finding a new design for our incubator/skaker-table.
	April 4th	This Friday, team members came together to create a project plan for ethics and human practices. Work was also done on our incubator/shaker-table, and Mrs.Puurunen VROC-ed, Magda Pop, one of our mentors.
	March 31st	This meeting begun with determining who could help in the lab Friday after school. However, most of it was spent split up into different groups. These groups include ethics, fundraising, building, and wiki.
	March 24th	Started by discussing progress on setting up our lab and when we should begin lab work. After this broke up into different groups for ethics, protocols, building, and fundraising.
	March 21st	The meeting this Friday consisted of: making a lab notebook template, working with out PCR machine, writing a draft e-mail to send to ethics board members, learning how to use the autoclave, contacting companies to print a poster for the jamboree. contacting our geekstarter mentors, working on an incubator shaker table, and updating our website timeline.
	March 17th	This week team members split up into groups to work on different parts of the project. The different groups included ethics, lab notebook and timeline, autoclave, and a team to learn how to work our P.C.R. machine.
	March 10th	During the meeting this week we were giving packages of lab protocols to read over. We also split up tasks between people interested in doing ethics work.
	March 7th	This week, we had an extra meeting Friday after school in order for us to write a project description. During this meeting team members also worked on building equipment for our lab, as well as starting work for the ethics part of our project.
	March 3rd	This meeting was very important since we finally decided on a project to pursue: a heat activated biosensor.
	February 24th	Coming back from a week break from school, the team’s task for the week was to evaluate each project idea .
	February 10th	At this team meeting, team members were reminded to continue research for the following week. We decided upon this since we did not have enough information to make a decision on a project yet.
	February 3rd	During this team meeting we split up into groups for researching the different project ideas throughout the week. Research for the project ideas includes finding past iGEM teams that have done something similar, finding biobricks related to our project, and contacting people that could help with the project.
	February 2nd	This was the first workshop day we spent with our Geekstarter mentors. We were given a more in depth explanation of the science we would be applying. We were also able to try some pipetting and were taught sterilizing techniques. Lastly, we went over project ideas so far and narrowed them down to an ethanol detector, a nitrate detector and decomposer, an air freshener, and a CO detector.
	January 30th	Much like the previous team meeting, most of the time was spent deciding on a project idea that our team could pursue. However, we also began team members were tasked with decided what part of the project (i.e. ethics, website, lab work, fundraising) they would rather work on.
	January 20th	Throughout this team meeting we, team members, wrote down and shared ideas for a project we could pursue. This was done on a shared Google Doc that can be accessed through the hyperlink in the paragraph above this table. Our ideas filled up 2 and a half pages typed.
	January 13th	Team meeting during which Mrs.Puurunen, one of the teachers helping us, gave us a 30-minute long lesson on the basics of DNA and genetic engineering. This was a very important and useful meeting since many of the team members were confused with the science we would need to apply throughout the course of this semester.
	January 9th	First team meeting. It consisted mainly of finding out who would be available for a first workshop with our iGEM geekstarter mentors. and sharing ideas people had for a project.
	December 23rd - January 5th	After receiving information that our team had qualified for funding, team members took time over the break to read over previous iGEM team wikis and summarize their favourite projects.
	Early On	After having first been introduced to the concept of iGEM the everyone interested in the project had to write a statement of interest in order to apply for funding through Geekstarter.