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From 2010.igem.org

Monday 12th July - Short day

We began by innoculating samples from our MG1655 and DH5-Alpha E.coli strains in LB media. The rest of the day was spent writing our project abstract, sending out emails and completing images for the Wiki. Another productive day, but not much to report on in terms of our usual antics.

Tuesday 13th July - Labs II

The team do some more labs. We started the day by finding our biobricks and locating the gene we were gonig to use. We decided to choose banana smell to start with for our first E.coli transformation... should get interesting if the transformation is successful - mmm banana Coli. We followed the procedure outlined by the IGEM for making cells chemically compotent, then froze most of the samples for future use. We then added the banana plasmid (in distilled water) to the samples, heat shocked and left to incubate at the correct temperatures according to the protocol. We also made a positive control with a 'non-banana' plasmid added to both strains. Left overnight on ampicillin agar, the samples should be ready in the morning to add iso-amyl alcohol to initiate some banana scent production in the bacteria.

Meanwhile we also worked on researching modelling and the protein/DNA sequence of BarA and CqsS.

Lunch: Boots lunch meal deals and packed lunches in city view cafe, Bioincubator, where we analysed synthetic biology in terms of good versus evil and had a round of random useless fact telling.

Wednesday 14th July – Made it to 21!

A very short day. The team were very distracted by cake for Tom's birthday. Good cake.

Thursday 15th July - Margharitas

Normal meeting in the morning. A bit more explanation was provided about the modelling and Steve looked at more gene quotes for ordering. We had lunch at Las Iguanas to celebrate Nii's and Tom's 21st's - a couple of (very strong) cocktails on the house and a few bought by the team too. All in all an enjoyable day. Post lunch we discussed the genes more and what we wanted to order.

Friday 16th July - Nii's 24th!

We started the day in Qaiser's office having a chat about plasmids and which ones mighht be useful for having multiple copies of for the transformation. After our meeting, we ventured back to the IC to draw out the kinase cascade for ideas about modelling. Caz sent out a few emails too. As it was Nii's birthday, naturally there was more cake to be had. In the afternoon we decided to retry creating our banana smelling E.coli, as our previous attempt was a failure. Fingers crossed this works!