Revision as of 09:07, 15 May 2010 by Jannetta (Talk | contribs)

(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Contents 1 Formal meeting 10 February 2010 1.1 Attendence 1.2 Timeline 1.3 Summary of last informal meeting 1.3.1 Jannetta's idea 1.3.2 Da's idea 1.3.3 Steven's idea 1.4 More ideas 1.4.1 Phil 1.5 Modelling tutorial 1.6 Any other business 1.7 Action points

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.