"

From 2010.igem.org

09:30 start to try tie up loose ends on initial ideas before the 14:00 meeting with team advisors. Okay, so the 09:30 start went slightly less to plan than we'd hoped, ranging from a few members arriving bright and breezy to those not so bright and breezy ones (Matt "12pm" ford). That aside the morning consisted of drawing up ideas for parts needed for desalination (e.g. ion channels or the 'bacman system' created by Newcastle University). Further work on Sheffield iGEM 2008 was made. We're now in the hope of modifying the system with an easier reporter (e.g. those used by Cambridge 2009's E.chromi). This could potentially give rise to a universal pathogen detector E.coli, with various colour outputs depending on the pathogen present. There is potential to engineer this system in B.subtillus as a proof of principle project to produce a dry, portable biosensor for pathogens. Following lunch at Interval, we met up with advisors fearing a grilling. Overall however, our hard work appears to have paid off, with all ideas appearing realistic within the 10 weeks (except using fuel cells for desalination, which Greg is having a further look into for us). We're now going to further research the ion channels that might make desalination possible. Improving Sheffield 2008's project was very popular at the meeting - many ideas have now been born from this, so full steam ahead at looking for biobricks tomorrow. Post-grilling we took some nice photos to go up on here and visited the molecular biology and biotechnology labs with Qaiser. We finished off the day with a round of drinks at the University Arms where we talked about the 1000000 keyrings Steve's ordering, Nii's gloves and performing our Jamboree presentation through the medium of dance.

Quotes of the day:

1. "We could do that, but we should probably do something good instead." - Andy
2. "I don't get the joke." - Tom
3. "I think of other stuff in the shower too, but I probably shouldn't talk about it." - Nii.
4. "Then we can get all bioinfornatics on its ass!" - Greg

Trivia: Sheffield's team members are probably quite rare - 3 of the 4 veggies (Andy too) are lefties!