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From 2013.igem.org

Week 6

Monday

As a team, we worked on summarizing our project so far and creating presentation slides to summarize our decisions and findings. We also looked for different samples of Eucalyptol to test our output of the system. We found two different grades. Calls will need to be made to determine the difference and choose which type will work the best for our protocols. We also decided to reach out to the Wisconsin Lutheran College iGEM team to see if we could collaborate in some way.

Tuesday

We began to write our protocols for the different parts of our project. We started with how to put the gene blocks together and how to add the prefix and the suffix to the different genes using primers. We also worked on the protocol to see how toxic Eucalyptol will be to the BL21 strain of E.coli. We also looked through existing instruction manuals of kits that our lab has recently ordered to see if there were any protocols we could use.

Wednesday

More protocols were looked at and progress was made on expanding the gene block protocol as well as the Eucalyptol toxicity protocol. We hope to keep working on protocols while our gene blocks are being ordered, made, and shipped. We also scheduled a collaboration meeting with the WLC iGEM team for Thursday. We're all looking forward to it!

Thursday

The collaboration meeting went great! The WLC iGEM team was very friendly and helpful! We determined that we can help them with their wiki and their community outreach project. We were very excited about their summer camp for high school kids, and couldn't wait to volunteer. They're helping us by giving us pointers for the jamboree and giving us advice on what the judges liked and looked for last year. We're really looking forward to our future collaboration!

Friday

Research was completed on growing BL21 E.coli in xylose and the effect it could have on the cells. We know that the E.coli can use the xylose, but it will utilize other sources of food first. More research will have to be completed on the mechanism surrounding this. We want to make sure that our output E.coli can utilize the xylose by itself so nothing else would have to be added to the medium. We hope to establish a protocol to examine this further.