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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-
4/5/12- We began to have two meeting dates to accommodate members who also participate in spring sports, and updated our genetic circuit. We looked through parts and decided more formally on what we want our cell to do, hoping to use scent but also a green florescent protein attached to the part, so we could safely test the effectiveness of our circuit and if our presentations worked. We also looked into contstraints we needed to work within, such as safe production and storage of carbon monoxide, how we'd safely test our device, and how long our device would work/last in a household environment, and what temperatures our cell would work best at.
4/12/12- Today we worked on making our wiki look pretty, researching our genetic circuit, and determining the safety and practicality of using CO in the school. 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.
4/19/12- APRIL Vacation
4/26/12- We worked on our iGEM commercial, and looked at the progress on an iGEM app (game). We moved the actual CO detecting device more into a theoretical idea and a path forward for next year. We won't be able to test our real detecting device, but we could still transform it. We looked into how carbon monoxide detector making companies test their devices, and updated and added information to the wiki. We also have experimental (proof of concept) and actual circuits in the works, and we got into groups to look into different smells that our circuit could produce, circuit parts we could use, how our circuit would work, and experimental protocols we could use.
May-
June- Preparation for Jamboree (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
