Team:UCL/Notebook/August

1st August

Bacterial lab had good results today in the preparation of a new stock of competent cells. In the evening we celebrated the success of the speed debate.

2nd August

Stjohn designed the linkers for the Mammalian Oxidative Stress Inducible Promoter. The team met to discuss fundraising ideas somehow making use of [kickstarter.com]. A starting idea: brain-with-plaques-for-sale.

We came up with the idea of a Memory Lane, where people could upload a photo of one of their memories and write a small description about it.

Alex suggested a collaboration with Westminster iGEM team regarding the speed debate idea.

5th August

Snapshots of the team members were taken!

The team worked on the abstract which must be uploaded shortly on wiki as the deadline is on the 9th.

Alex contacted the Imperial iGEM team regarding an eventual collaboration.

6th August

Rob invited the team at 12 noon in the Anatomy Hub to discuss about the wiki design in order to make sure that all the ideas about this matter are taken into account.

7th August

Barbeque evening, venue Wilkins Roof Garden!

Prof. Eli Keshavarz-Moore was our guest and at 3 pm we also had the chance to present our project. (venue: Malet Place Engineering LT 1.03)

8th August

The team discussed about the work on zeocin,pA-f1-Zec biobrick, which will indeed be an improvement of BBa_J176124 because:

i) it gives most of the functionality of BBa_J176124 but is compatible with standard assembly

ii) it allows people to simply insert a PROMOTER-ORF fragment upstream of a pA to give an expression cassette for the ORF of interest, and a ZEC to select stable transfectants.

9th August

Project description is up on Wiki!

Darren gave us a visit at the lab to check if everything is O.K. with our work and enthusiasm. The requested batch of biobricks arrived as glycerol stocks.

The team discussed about Kickstarter crowdfunding and planned to launch the Memory Lane/Map thing WITHOUT getting people to pay. We will get people to upload their best memories in different forms and potentially do some beautiful art with it like the Memory Palace FYi suggested.

12th August

We had a strategy chat at the lab with Darren.

FYi drawn the wiki background for the diary section. She also made the illustrations for the T-shirts. The team also debated on the wiki design and a consensus was reached regarding the site map, default banner, logo.

In 'Memory Lane', we are going to ask people to 'leave one strong memory' on one page whether in text or pictures. These will be done anonymously but they will leave their emails with us so they will be notified when the 'compilation' is up.

The website came to life today!

13th August

Alex and Oran came up with the idea of a Creative writing competition.

FYi, Robin, Alex and Stjohn and Oran focused on wiki building for the weeks to come while the rest of the team worked in the Bacterial Labs.

14th August

The advertisement for the competition was written and the competition was launched. More details about the outcome can be found on the ‘Competition’ subsection.

Met the Westminister team to discuss about the potential modelling collaboration. It was a nice gathering.

15th August

Continued intensively planning and brainstorming for the design of our wiki, especially on the front page design.

16th August

Alex finished the essay on Neuroethics on which he has dedicated around 2 weeks of research.

19th August

Alex advertised the writing competition on prizemagic.co.uk.

Stjohn released a new set of rules for managing wiki content in order to make work easier before the wiki freeze.

20th August

The actual work on the main poster on the frontal page started. FYi produced the first sketch and the team gave feedback.

The members’ Profiles are ready to be uploaded on wiki!

21th August

The lab was closed in the morning, however in the afternoon the Bacteria Team prepared selective plates and selective media in order to culture the last arrived biobricks from the HQ. Darren assisted us.

The linkers designed by Stjohn: IGM Ox L1, L2, L3, L4 as well primers for cmv promoter were ordered.

22th August

The first Creative Competition Entry! Yey! Thank you!

The atmosphere in the Bacterial Lab became slightly more cheerful. The amplification of zeocin from the 2 types of ordered primers was successful as well as the digestion of K812014 and pSB1C3 and pSB1A3. We decided to use the zec bb F,R primers for the further amplification of zeocin.

The Zeocin kill curve was derived, a concentration of 150 ug/ml was used.

23th August

The main poster for the front page was finalised. Well done FYi!

New submissions for the Creative writing! Lonza confirmed a sponsorship of £1, 207. Happy Happy Joy Joy! Well done Weiling!

26th August

The lab was closed today hence we all focused on the wiki content.

The front page poster background - wasteland was completed.

27th August

Weiling emailed Geneious and Eppendorf with regards to Sponsorship.

28th August

The Biosafety forms were filled in as necessary. These must be signed by Darren before the 30th.

We met Darren at 4 pm in the lab to discuss about the biobrick processing.

29th August

We considered the strategy to deal with the linker region. First step is to achieve the annealing of the oligonucleotides making up this linker. We're still waiting for these sequences.

Agreed on the final design of the T-shirts. We're aiming to order them as soon as possible.

30th August

We uploaded the first samples of memories on the Memory Lane page.