"

From 2010.igem.org

Monday 19th July - Grill?

Early (9:00 am) start for a few to attempt to get some more web design done. We started labs today by finding out that our banana E.coli had once again failed, but we're still determined to get E.coli that don't smell like E.coli, so for part of the day we transformed a wintergreen and 2 other banana plasmids into E.coli, in case there was a problem with the DNA in the first well.

Meanwhile we looked at sponsorship and added some finishing touches for our presentation in Newcastle tomorrow. At 15:30 we presented our progress to the advisors fearing a grilling...

Grilling again was not as bad as expected. The advisors were impressed by all of our work so far and were happy that the genes we ordered cost much less than what they were fearing. After completing our presentation, we worked a bit on the buttons for the wiki and on some genetics.

Tuesday 20th July - Newcastle!

Early start for the 9.20 train to Edinburgh. We all (...or most) met at the train station for 9.00 to ensure we all made the train. A couple of team members arrived just in the nick of time, which kick started the our adrenaline for the day. We arrived at newcastle for 11.30 - plenty of time to get up to the university for lunch... or so you would think. Sadly we got lost in a field somewhere, avoiding the quicker direction because there were cows nearby (an unfortunate case of bovinophobia within the team). Finally arriving at the right place for 13.00, we grabbed what lunch we could and sat to enjoy the team talks.

Following alphabetical order, we were quite far down the list to give our presentation. It was great to see how well plannned and clear ther other teams' presentations were. Some very interesting ideas this year. This set a high standard for us to follow on from - here come the nerves! Overall though, we don't think we did too badly. Every team appeared to have strong points, and we seemed to have made a good impression with our human practices work. Let's keep it up!

After giving our talk we had a brief break and watched the rest of the talks. Looking good for the UK this year! Following the talks we had our team building exercise of building the tallest egg holding tower out of spaghetti, cocktail sticks, a plastic tub and marshmallows. It appeared that most problematic (and tasty) were the marshmallows that faked their structural integrity. At first appearance they were quite strong, but given a few minutes holding a structure together entropy ensued and the marshmallows disintegrated. We can't remember which colour team won, but sadly none of our team were a member of this team - well done winning team.

Next on the agenda was a visit to the local pub, which had a nice selection of ales and a friendly atmosphere for us to get to know members of other teams. Naturally hungry from the busy day, we followed on to La Tasca in town for muchas tapas y sangria! The walk down was quite lengthy and wet, but it definitely helped us work up a healthy appetite. Dinner was very tasty and it was good to chat to the teams over lots of food.

Fortunately we didn't have such a long journey up, so we were probably a bit more awake than some of the other teams - enough stamina to last us for a few bars. Again a great opportunity for witty banter and to have a laugh with other UK iGEMmers. We sadly lost the other teams towards the end of the night and ended up in a very strange place right at the end called Eazy Street. We'll not say what the first thing we saw was as we entered, as we're trying to keep our Wiki quite censored, but feel free to ask at the Jamboree. Definitely a unique experience. We returned at ~4am chatting breeze and looking for vegetarian pot noodles. A silly state, but we had a barrel of laughs. Very impressed with the day - sorry if we woke anyone upon our return!

Word of the day: Hyperspankoid

Food of the day: Marshmallows

Drink of the day: Sangria

Place of the day: Newcastle!

Wednesday 21st July – Banana babies

A bit of a groggy start for the team members silly enough to carry on drinking last night in Eazy Street. Unfortunately this led to our late arrival to the morning talks - sorry to everyone there for our rather rude interruption! We did manage to take some interesting points about tips, safety and human practices from the talks, which will prove useful when we get around to adding more depth to our project.

After enjoying the last of the talks, we decided it was time to head home to Sheffield. Once we arrived in Sheffield Caz went to check our samples... WE HAVE BANANA AND WINTERGREEN E.COLI!!! - awesome.

We'd just like to thank Newcastle for organising the get together. We found the trip a great opportunity to socialise with other UK teams, learn some valuable tips for our work and to see how well everyone else is getting on with their projects. We'll look forward to seeing you and the rest of UK iGEM again at the Jamboree, best of luck with your projects, we hope all goes well!

Thursday 22nd July - Back to work!

So we learned a lot from our trip to Newcastle. It's definitely kicked us back into work seeing how well into their project the other UK teams were. We began the day meeting at the IC for 10am. Tom worked on buttons, while Nii and Narmada worked on the Wiki and Steve, Matt and Caz did some gene ordering, lab work and ethics.

Andy popped us a brief visit to see how everything was going. We worked over lunch, as there was quite a bit to catch up on from our time away.

Friday 23rd July – Camp-coli

Despite the rain, we all managed to make it to the IC for 10 by the latest. Steve and Matt took care of looking at plasmid vectors for the genes we've ordered. Tom designed the Campest E.coli EVER for our logo... heavily criticised, so back to the drawing board on that one Tom.

Lunch was spent at the Frog an Parrot for a healthy serving of nachos, burgers and curly fries, yum. After lunch we headed to the Bioincubator. Steve, mat and Andy sat playing PewPew on their iPhones, whilst Tom, Caz and Narmada did some real work. Tom and Caz made some competent BarA knockout MG1655 E.coli cells and stored them in the freezer with messy messy glycerol. In between centrifuges and incubations Tom and Caz joined the rest of the team, which led to Tom's injured toe on the stairs between rooms. Hope it gets better Tom. Finally we ended our Friday (less fatigues this week) together in city view cafe having a laugh and enjoying each other's company as alwyas (awww).

Over and out week 4!