"

From 2010.igem.org

Monday 2nd August - back in city view cafe

Again the attempts of transforming the BarA mutant have been unsuccessful. We decided the cells made by Tom and Caz failed to be competent, so steve, Matt and Caz made some more compotent cells in the afternoon. Nii and Narmada continued their work at modelling transcription and translation for our experiments. Tom developed an image of Catherine, who is now our super adviser with the power of controlling water and also tried to get the wiki online, with unfortunate results. Back to the drawing board.

The evening plan - team bowling at Hollywood Bowl! Team Andy, Nii, Tom and Phil were the first winners, then Steve, Caz, Narmada and Matt won the second game. Following bowling, the team headed into town for a few quiet ones and a few games of pool. Evidently we're a team with much stamina - the doormen had to make us leave, as the bars were shutting.

Tuesday 3rd August - Not much planned, just work.

The team arrived on time in the morning (minus Steve who was off to London to compete in a race - best of luck Steve!). Tired from our night bowling, we begun work for the day - still as eager as ever though. The transformations from yesterday proved unsuccessful, and to make things more confusing the negative control was the only sample which grew. Time for Caz and Matt to grow some more competent BarA KO cells up that aren't so backwards.

We also worked on some more human practices today. Kate helped us create some questions for the interviews with other universities.

Wednesday 4th August - Come dine with me.

More sciency work done during the day - pretty much the same as we've been doing every day - modelling, a bit of lab work with competent cells. To break up the afternoon Kate begun her interviewing for our human practices work. We were used as guinea pigs to test the questions and how long each interview would last. This was important to show how well the questions would work for interviewing other universities. Interviews lasted approximately an hour, so we decided it might be a good idea to cut them down slightly.

Evening plans - Andy's house! The team were treated with homemade bruchetta for a starter, homemade pizza for main and chocolate roulade/lemon tart for dessert... and of course plenty of wine to wash it all down with. On the agenda was our usual 'inuendo' packed conversation and board games including 'articulate'. Conclusions from the evening: Andy is a brilliant host with excellent cooking skills.

Word of the day: 'Schindler's Lift'

Food of the day: Balmer's Bruchetta

Beverage of the day: Wine... of course

Place of the day: Riverside... Let's go! *do-do-do-do-do*

Thursday 5th August - Just a spoonfull of Sugar...

12pm start to allow the wine to wear off. Some arrived at this rather generous time, some didn't (Tom 'lazy' Leach & Matt 'flagging' Ford). The plan for the day was to continue with designing primers to order, editing the wiki and modelling. The day was interspaced by an instruction to help clean the lab, so the team got their blue gloves on armed with plenty of ethanol to wipe down the benches. Who knew cleaning could be so fun. Post cleaning the wiki template was completed, Steve, Matt and Caz did some primer work and Nii and Narmada worked on the modelling some more.

Friday 6th August - Friday feeling!

Seems the team roles have settled for the time being - Nii and Narmada had a meeting with Visakan in the afternoon to discuss modelling our whole system. Tom worked on design and Steve, Caz and Matt made some more science. The team end the week ready for another iGEM weekend. Week 6 over - it's crazy how fast this is going!!!