Monday July 12, 2010

Raida

Today I worked on creating the Powerpoint that we will be presenting to Suffield on Wednesday. In the powerpoint, I've included what Synthetic Biology is, the two school of thoughs on the Ethics (pro-actionary vs. pre-cautionary), two interesting projects of past iGEM teams and three questions that we can ask the Researchers.

Jeremy

Today I contructed I0500+ B0034 with E0040 using 4 colonies of I0500+B0034. This is further verification that B0034 was added because PCR and gel electrophoresis is not sensitive enough to indicate whether B0034 was added. I also did a plasmid switch on K239000 and K135000 from Amp to Amp and Kan.

Himika

Today I researched about some high copy plasmid versus low copy plasmid characteristics that I could use for modelling in MATLAB simbiology program. I also looked into designing better primers for the SOEing PCR reaction which would be used to make the transcription translation circuit. I also gave the team a preliminary write up of the project description which was then given to the rest of the team to edit.

Chris

Today, I contacted representatives of VWR, Corning Life Sciences, Life Technologies, Fisher Scientific, Agilent Technologies, and QLT about possible sponsorships. As of now, no responses have been received. Today, I also spent time editing the proposed project description that should be up on July 16.

Alex

Today I ran a gel of the PCR product made on Friday. The reaction appeared to have failed because there a no bands present from any of the 5 wells. We then ran three gradient PCR reactions to determine if the melting point or magnesium ion concentration can be manipulated to yield a result.

Patrick

No bands appeared from the gel of the PCR we ran last week. Instead, a double gradient PCR was run in order to see which conditions would be the ideal. Three strips were run, one with 5.0μL Mg²⁺, another with 1.5μL, and the last with 2.5μL. Each strip contained 12 tubes on an annealing temperature gradient of 50-65 degrees.