Notebook

March

Brainstorming

Project ideas:
Pests
Bacterial Pest attractor (engineer bacteria to produce a substance, such as a pheromone or smell, that attracts and kills pests such as insects)
Natural pesticides (engineer bacteria to produce a substance that repels or kills pests, such as those that harm crops, that can later be implemented into plants)

Water/Environment:
Desalination of water (engineering bacteria to get rid of salt in salt water in order to make drinkable water from sea water)
Getting rid of estrogen mimicking compounds in water (engineering bacteria to degrade them or sequester them)
Waste treatment (engineering bacteria that can be integrated into waste water treatment)
CFCs (engineer bacteria to produce metabolites that break down chlorofluorocarbons—compounds that contribute to the degradation of the ozone layer)

Health
Stomach ulcers (creating a medication containing engineered bacteria to specifically target and kill Helicobacter pylori – the organism that causes stomach ulcers)
Diabetes (engineered bacteria as Islet cells to produce insulin)
Allergies/Immune system (engineer bacteria to produce antihistamines or alter epitopes)
Bone density (engineer bacteria to produce and secrete calcium and other compounds to help heal broken bones or to prevent osteoporosis)

Process Improvement
Oil fractionation catalyst (engineering bacteria to improve the separation of crude oil into valuable fraction and waste fraction)
Nitrate fixation (engineer bacteria to improve nitrogen fixation so not as much fertilizer is needed)

Kill Switches (engineering bacteria to undergo induced or programmed cell death in order to control the organism)

The chosen project

After dividing in to a few groups based on which project was preferred, each group made a presentation on the proposed project. In the end, we decided to go with the glucose sensing project.

Project outline

Possible things to consider

Glucose and insulin
-Detection of blood glucose levels (glucose-specific promoter?)
-Insulin production release (measure/regulation of production?)

Immune response
-Possibly use "bactoblood" strain from Berkeley 2007

Kill switch
-Control and regulation?

Delivery system
-Intravenous?
-NASA Biocapsule?

April

We divided the team into sub-groups. Each group assumed responsibility for a different aspect of the project.

Sub-groups:

-Wiki and Mascot Design

-Biosafety

-Human Practices

Wiki and Mascot Design:

This group is responsible to obtaining and uploading all necessary information to the wiki. This includes team pictures and biographies, experiments and results, and the projects of the other sub-groups. This will be a priority over mascot design.

Biosafety:

This group must demontrate the safety protocols that the Lethbridge team practices in the lab.

Human Practices:

This group is responsible for letting the poublic know what our team is and what we are doing. This can be done creatively. The point it to raise awareness for iGEM, synthetic biology and diabetes.

May

June