Team:UIUC-Illinois/Bootcamp

From 2010.igem.org

Revision as of 18:56, 21 June 2010

UIUC-Illinois iGEM Bootcamp!

Introduction

In order to have the most effective team possible, we designated our first week of summer 5/24-28/2010 as a Synthetic Biology, iGEM bootcamp. Here we covered all the technical basics we would need to be successful as well as discussing other aspects of an iGEM team. This week was designed to put our whole team on the same level despite significantly different backgrounds. Both the Bioware and Software Tools team participated in many of the morning discussions on using the PartsRegistry, biological models, editing the wiki, bioethics, and more. In the afternoons, the Bioware team carried out a simple project and learned basic lab techniques while the tools team learned the coding languages they will use throughout the summer.

Ideally, by the end of this first week, any given iGEM team would have the necessary tools to pursue, accomplish, analyze, and document their project given the rest of the summer.

Schedule

This schedule varied somewhat, particularly towards the end of the week as we all learned an essential lession: Not everything works the way you want it to the first time ; ) Schedule

General Overview

• Monday ○ Research and discuss procedure for overall project ○ Determine a timeline and project deadlines ○ Bioware § Cover procedure for this week's simple project § Labwork: miniprep ○ Software-Tools § Discuss goals for the week • Tuesday ○ Learning to use the parts registry ○ Primer design lead by Dr. Rao ○ Bioware § Labwork: digestion, ligation, transformation ○ Software-Tools § Learning code • Wednesday ○ Editing the Wiki and OpenWetWare pages ○ Data Collection and Characterization ○ Bioware § Research § Labwork: innoculation ○ Software-Tools § Research § Updating Last year's project • Thursday ○ Bioethics Discussion ○ Modeling Basics ○ Bioware § Labwork: Fluorescence reading, Colony PCR ○ Software-Tools § Research and learning code • Friday ○ Bioware § Meeting with Advisors □ Presentation of labwork and research ○ Software-Tools § Meeting with Advisors □ Project development ○ Administrative meeting between Bioware and Software-Tools students § Project updates § Administrative updates: Outreach, Wiki, Financial, etc. § Fundraising - begin organizing 3 basic fundraisers

Bioware Protocol

This is the general protocol that each of the four two person groups on the Bioware team used to accomplish a basic project throughout this week.

The week before hand, each group picked a promoter and reporter gene available in the parts registry. Our science director transformed these out of the registry, prepared plates and media, and ensured we had all the necessary materials several days ahead of time so our first step was to perform a miniprep to remove the plasmids from each of the transformations.

• Miniprep
• Biobrick PCR (optional, but probably a good idea)
• Digestion
• Possible DNA purification
• Ligation
• Transformation
• Innoculation in liquid media
• Fluorescence reading
• Colony PCR
• Possible Miniprep and Biobrick PCR

Documentation

Meeting Minutes for each day of the week (5/24-5/28) can be found here.

Here is a powerpoint summarizing the Bioware labwork and research from this week: Media:UIUC5.28.2010_Week_1_Summary.ppt