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Team:Tyngsboro MA Tigers/Notebook
From 2012hs.igem.org
NOTEBOOK
Finding Our Idea
Our Team meets every Thursday from 2-4pm. Below you will find summaries of our meetings, as well as links to the agenda lists.
October- We were introduced to and learned about the principles of synthetic biology, and completed and analyzed the results of the Eau d'Coli lab. We also elected different officers (Liaison, Secretary, Media Specialist, etc)and began looking at the purpose of the club and what our goals were.
November- This month, we began brainstorming ideas for our project. We looked through the Party Registry, and individuals were given specific assignments in different categories (ie synthetic bio presentations, a newspaper article, fundraising, etc).
December- Looking for grants for lab supplies/fundraising opportunities and coming up with new methods of outreach were a consistent undercurrent during this month and through many of the proceeding months. We input our data so far into the BioBuilder site and became even more serious about finding ideas for our topic. We narrowed our ideas down to a top three (desalinization, a home strep test, and a converter to make car exhaust not harmful to the environment) and worked our first fundraiser.
January- We began more research on our top three project ideas, focusing on finding parts in the Registry that could be useful in our projects. However, upon further research we found that most of our ideas either had already been done or were impractical given our circumstances, and ended up sticking with an idea of creating a bacteria that detects carbon monoxide and has some kind of output. We also looked into older iGEM wikis to prepare for ours, and did further preparation in anticipation of receiving our wiki, such as researching carbon monoxide, its affects on humans, and related parts in the wiki.
February- We shared our findings on CO, and did a significant amount of further research on the topic. The team members were officially registered on the iGEM site, began using TinkerCell to create diagrams of possible cell part setups, and started on our project description. We also made a 'commercial' about iGEM and synthetic biology to be aired on our school news.
March- The wiki was finally open!!! We started on our thesis statement and explored the possibilities of the R. rubrum bacteria and it's parts. We held more fundraisers, and planned for even more in the future. We worked on the E. chromi lab, and thought of our project title, finally deciding on "E. COLfactory: A smell test for the detection of carbon monoxide." Spring sports began this month, and we started Tuesday morning meetings as a supplement to Thursday afternoons to accommodate the spring athletes. We also received a generous donation of $150 from Granite Ridge Energy and looked into the possibility of safe production and storage of CO.
April- We looked through the Parts Registry more formally to decide exactly what we wanted our cell to do, and also looked into the possibility of attaching a green florescent protein to the part to safely test its effectiveness. We looked into safety and other constraints we needed to work within, such as the dangers of using CO to test the cell, the longevity of the device, and what temperatures the cell would work best in. We also attempted to beautify our wiki some, and further researched our genetic circuit. We found an online site NorLab which sold calibration gases and equipment. They sold various quantities of 200ppm and 50ppm CO. According to an online representative, both of these quantities are safe to use and would require no special chamber to use it. They sent us a File:MSDS for CO. We found that when CO detectors are exposed to low concentrations of CO (100ppm)the detector will not sound for 10s of minutes. When the ppm is 400 or greater, the detector will sound in a few minutes. The purpose of this is to mimic the uptake of CO in the body while preventing false alarms due to natural fluctuation. We also continued work on the iGEM commercial and looked at the progress of an iGEM app (game). Near the end of the month, we decided to make our CO detecting device a theoretical design, because we wouldn't be able to test it, however we still had the possibility of transforming it. In lieu, we developed an experimental proof of concept circuit, and different smells our circuit could use, and what our final genetic circuit would be.
May- We finalized our circuit, and ended up choosing a banana-scented output, because it was available to us through the registry. We worked on transforming our experimental circuit, which uses doxycyclene as a trigger instead of CO, but still works much in the same way to show how a 'trigger' can cause a specific output.
June- Preparation for Jamboree (which we will be attending through Skype), finalizing wiki before the freeze, and finishing our cell. Then the Jamboree itself!!!
Click here to see our CREATING THE GENETIC CIRCUIT page
