Formal meeting 10 February 2010

Start time 3.30pm.

Attendence

Rhilip, Rachel, Zoltan, Harsh, Younus, Alan, Steven, Da, Jannetta, Richard, Neil, Jen and Matt

Timeline

• Everything up to the lab work is now on dotProject, except for DNA synthesis
• T-shirts and visas were brought forward by 3 months
• Everyone should familiarise themselves with it between now and next week's meeting
• Not added yet: iGEM deadlines, internal deadline for biobricks and the glass award decision

Summary of last informal meeting

Jannetta's idea

• Bacteria binding to beans, taking nitrogen up from the air.
• Need more research, need a reason to think we can do this better than nature.
• Working with plants will be difficult, they take too long to grow so it would be hard to test.

Da's idea

• Diabetes treatment.
• Could the bacteria detect the insulin/blood sugar levels themselves?
• Could test in tissue culture
• Need to look at ethical issues
• Look at the abstract of the relevant paper in the next meeting

Steven's idea

• "Evolving non-evolvability"
• Recent issue of Nature is relevant
• Zoltan mentioned a relevant paper
• Richard: apply the same idea to protein? Check that protein still has the desired shape
• A single base change in a protein can have a big effect on protein shape
• Could use transition state analogue to see if enzyme is still binding correctly?
• Foundation advance award?

More ideas

Phil

• Heavy water idea is infeasible because it is too difficult to detect biologically.
• Create DNA inside bacteria itself, would require a lot of proteins. Recombination of plasmids.
• Instead of activating DNA, activate RNA instead?
• Not many teams have looked at working with RNA, so novel.
• Look up Christina Smolke's research on RNA synthetic biology
• Foundation advance award again.

Modelling tutorial

• Will be finished next week.
• Computational modelling is useful when a system becomes too complex for a biologist to keep track of in their head.
• The computer running the model will be able to give you precise numbers, and to tell you what happens over time.
• Qualitative model: No numbers.
• Quantitative model: Qualitative model + numbers.
• We are talking about the lac operon.
• Species: lacZ-CDS (coding sequence), plac - lac operon promoter, lacI-CDS, LacI-Lactose, LacI-prot, LacIdimer, Lactose - sugar, lacOperator-LacIdimer, LacZ-prot, RNApol, RNApol-plac, lacOperator, lacZ-mRNA.

Any other business

• The formal meeting time can't be brought earlier. What can we do about this? Skype?

Action points

• Need one wiki page with our phone numbers
• Need a standing agenda
• Need a higher-level overview of the timeline for Jen and Neil: just a list of tasks, with final dates, rather than a day-by-day detailed timeline.
• To go on the timeline: Book flights, book accommodation, poster printing, starting lab, finishing lab, people's holidays, exam periods.
• Data mining for Friday.
• End date for new ideas this Friday.
• Shortlisting next Wednesday. Make a page with all the projects, everyone give a rating: feasibility, novelty, wow factor, etc.
• "Homework": draw lines between species that you think interact.