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Team:UCL/Notebook
From 2013.igem.org
Notebook
January
First meeting was held after the team had been assembled. Introductions to each other and team building exercises take place to familiarise to help everyone get to know each other. Discussions take place with previous iGEM team members from UCL so the new team gain some context and guidance concerning how to approach an iGEM project.
Each member of the new team was told to present for 5 minutes on a 2012 based team, commenting on their strengths and weaknesses. Further discussions about the general area 'track' that the team would be interested in. Given that many team members have a medical sciences background, medical based ideas were favoured among the majority of the team.
February
First meeting was held after the team has been assembled. Introduction to each other and team building exercises take place to familiarise the team members with each other. Discussions take place with previous iGEM team members from UCL so the new team have some context and guidance concerning how to approach any iGEM project.
•Weight control yoghurt
•Anti-cancer yoghurt
•Zebrafish water cleaning system for Third World
•Athletic Drug testing
•Clean Urban Air
•Neural network with glowing bacteria and fibre optics
•Clean Urban Air
Visited a DIY SynBio group at The Arts Catalyst for feedback on our project ideas and to display posters we can created for them, in order to get feedback from the members of the public who came to the venuw for synbio workshops. Some of the members there were previous iGEM candidates from several countries, with many liking the anti cancer yoghurt idea. In general, the publlic found medical projects more appealing, partly becuase they tried to solve tangible problems that cannot be mitigated soley by 'electrical' or 'mechnaical' technologies.
March
Final meetings before exams, both internally and at the Arts Catalyst. The idea pool has been narrowed down to:
Anti-cancer yoghurt Clean Urban Air Alzheimer's disease Neural Network Members of the group also held a probiotic yoghurt workshop for the anti-cancer project, where members of the public made yoghurt. The audience were informed about the project and opinions were gathered.April & May
The audience were informed about the project and opinions were gathered.
June
5th June - Group discussion concerning the project idea to be carried forward - favouring the 'Anti cancer project'. Roles were then assigned to team members present for intial research roles for the week: Cancer research roles:
1. Ruxi Comisel - Proteins upregulated in cancer of the intestines. Specifically in the outer epithelial cell (enterocytes) – in microvilli. Also, what actually is... gut cancer? A general overview would be useful… 2. Khaicheng Kiew - Our chassis (bearing in mind that we will also build it in E. coli as a backup). We need to think what would make a good chassis in our case (ie. naturally found in the gut in an obvious one), and how well does the chassis fit. 3. Alex Bates - What will the killing mechanism be? A broad overview of cancer treatments is required, specifically detailing how a bacterium can administer the treatment.
