Team:Calgary/11 May 2010

From 2010.igem.org

Tuesday May 11, 2010

Today, we spent the day making Top10 competent cells from the original Invitrogen source. They were made competent through the method involving CaCl2. We considered using electroporation as a method of making cells competent but it is not cost-effective to do this with so many cells. The cells were made and will be stored in the -80°C freezer until use. The procedure for making competent cells as well as transforming DNA into them can be found in our online Lab Protocols. As a group, we came together and combined the ideas that we had as possible projects for the summer. We ended up narrowing the ideas down to:

  • Bacteria producing vanilla-flavoured alcool
  • Bacteria that produced cheap hydrogen that could possibly power fuel cells
  • Directed Evolution as a technique
  • Bacteria that detected vanilla in food products for those with vanilla allergies
  • A circuit that would be able to assemble DNA easily in one day
  • A protein troubleshooting kit that could be used to determine what was going wrong with a protein