Team:UCL/Notebook/July

1st July

Tom – Extracted information from private wiki and shutdown performed by Philipp Boeing. Prepared for narration of stop-motion. Also discussed project proposals with StJohn and Ruxi.

Alex, Catrin, Emily, Andy – Continued work on the stop-motion project.

StJohn & Ruxi – Formed project proposals for the laboratory experiments.

2nd July

The team had a meeting with Philipp Boeing, primarily about Human Practice and which direction should be taken in terms of gaining awareness and also funding for the project. Ruxi and StJohn then continued working on experimental protocol preparation while the rest of the team visited the Science Museum to look at their Alzheimer's exhibit for inspiration on both project development and artistic direction that our human practices should take.

3rd July

The Majority of the group continued to work on the proposals as some of the components were found to be difficult to obtain or not feasible. Tom began the YSB poster design, Robin continued on the modelling proposal.

4th July

The entire group attended safety training demonstrated by Brian O’Sullivan. A meeting was also held with experts in the field concerning microglia, Jenny Reagen amongst others.

Tom continued on poster design with Catrin looking at previous posters for inspiration. Andy met with Bethan Wolfenden to talk about debating, the rest of the group.

5th July

Tom & Catrin – Worked on the poster and finished it, as well as the presentation

Alex, Andy and Weiling – Focussed on human practises, pafrticularly essay writing and documentary planning.

KC, Ruxi and StJohn – Continued work on proposals and sent completed documents to Darren.

8th July

Meeting with Darren leads to more work on proposals, particularly procurement and logistics of items required for laboratory work. The group also spent a lot of time discussing titles for the project, with ‘Plaque Buster’ and ‘Memory Guardian’ being the more popular names in an alternate voting system.

9th July

Following the meeting with Darren yesterday, the group met and rectified the experiments system to make it clearer and more achievable to obtain bronze, silver and gold medals, reducing the number of new parts required from 12 to 3 essential ones, for example.

10th July

The group sent the new proposal to Dr. Darren Nesbeth, and are to wait for a response before continuing with specific inventory/experiment write ups. Instead, the group allocated roles for this should the proposal be accepted, and then went to the gallery of surgery to investigate cranial injections, and the implications and feasibility of this form of surgery.

11th July

The group spent the majority of the day preparing for the Young Synthetic Biologists event, with Tom, Alex and KC practised their presentations, with the whole group contributing to the poster and also deciding on the working title, although this was unsuccessful.

12th July

The group spent the majority of the day preparing for the Young Synthetic Biologists event, with Tom, Alex and KC practised their presentations, with the whole group contributing to the poster and also deciding on the working title, although this was unsuccessful.

13th July

YSB Day 2: Collaboration continued between teams for feedback and suggestion purposes. Tom and Alex initiated the creation of a national SynbioSoc so it easier for iGEM teams to communicate ideas and generally collaborate for both this year and the future. Tom also announced the iGEM football tournament, which was met with enthusiasm by other teams.

15th July

First day of lab, under instruction by Dr. Darren Nesbeth and Yanika Borg, the team were shown various items in the labs and how to use them, with emphasis on good laboratory practice at all times. The team also met up with Oran and FongYi to discuss how the artistic side of the project will be undertaken. Oran and FongYi joined the team.

16th July

Tom, Catrin, Andy & Weiling - Under supervision from Yanika Borg, the team created ‘minimal agar’ plates to grow W3110 E. coli cells on. The cells were left to incubate overnight for a 16 hour period.

KC, Alex & StJohn – Worked on primer design for the PCR reactions planned. Difficulties with finding flanking DNA sequences were encountered.

17th July

Tom, Catrin, Andy & Weiling - Under supervision from Yanika Borg, the team looked at the cell cultures in the morning and discovered that the cells had not grown, so came back in the afternoon and noticed growth on 2 of the 5 plates. Further incubation of 17 hours was agreed upon.

KC & Alex – Started mammalian cell lab induction.

The team then met with artists to further develop the branding of the whole project.

18th July

Tom, Catrin, Andy & Weiling – Lab experiment with Yanika Borg – Selection of colonies then resuspension into growth media, followed by incubation until 10:00 tomorrow.

StJohn & KC – Primer design for the PCR protocols

Alex – Continued work on ethics and feasibility report & bioinformatics

19th July

Tom, Catrin, Andy & Weiling – Continued Lab experiments with Yanika Borg – Re-suspension & centrifugation of colonies.

StJohn & KC – Primer design for the PCR protocols

Alex – Continued work on ethics and feasibility report & bioinformatics

22nd July

Meeting with Darren reveals that primer design needs to be reconfigured, and that the strategy for Gold is currently not acceptable, so this will be worked on. We won the inter-UCL award for best wiki of July. StJohn worked on primers and KC worked on protocols.

Tom, Catrin, Andy & Emily performed bacterial labs, using transformation skills.

23rd July

Tom, Catrin, Andy & Emily performed bacterial labs once more, repeating yesterday’s experiments due to a failed transformation.

StJohn did more rectification work on primer design. KC searched for any possible molecules which could be used as an alternative molecules that naturally exist in the brain as replacements for auxin detection system.

Weiling & Alex went to KCL (Institute of Psychiatry) to interview professor John Powell, an expert in the field of Alzheimer’s diseases, and other brain related diseases.

24th July

Until the 26th of July the bacterial lab work did not get any further. Several transformations were performed but neither was successful. After these trials, the decision of making new competent cells was taken.

The entire team was sent the information regarding mammalian lab aseptic techniques. StJohn analised an article on Microglia function in Alzheimer’s disease.

Alex gathered more information regarding main transcription factors/promotors we could use for detecting the oxidative stress caused near plaques.

The team decided to meet over for a barbeque on the 7th of August.

25th July

Oran came to the lab and was introduced to the lab routine and to the activities on going. The team met again in the Student Anatomy hub to continue research on useful articles.

26th July

A summary of the week lab work:

- We have made stocks of all constituents needed to grow cells (E. coli W3110) and have a stock in the -80C cold storage.

- We attempted transformation (p1313) on three separate occasions but it failed each time (although controls worked as expected).

- We used Yanika's personal cell stock of W3110 and performed the transformation successfully.

- Therefore today we remade the constituents needed at the start, we will perform plate streaking etc. after the weekend, and hopefully have more success with transformation as well.

The following biobricks were ordered BBa_1712004, BBa_K812014, BBa_J63008. They’re supposed to arrive through UPS service by the 31st of July.

29th July

An important day for our team! The project name “Spotless mind” was chosen!

The MathWorks license for the 2013 iGEM student competition has been created.

The Biobricks from the iGEM HQ arrived today, which includes a mammalian plasmid backbone and 2 auxin signalling parts.

30th July

The entire team is involved in organising the speed debate taking place tomorrow, 31st. FYi and Oran produced a nice debate poster and a new logo!

31st July

We organised a neuroethics themed Speed Debate at Print Room Cafe, UCL. We started preparation such as buying refreshments, setting up the venue, printing survey sheets and poster at 4pm. At 7pm, guests started to arrive. Over 90 participants attended the speed debate. Dr. Howard Boland, Alex Bates, Philipp Boeing and Shirley Nurock from the Alzheimer's Society spoke at the speed debate.

The event was a success, many guests stayed to discuss further and alot of interests were received regarding the progress of our project. We cleaned the venue and wrapped up at 10.30pm