Team:UGent Belgium/Notebook
General notebook
- February 29:
- Application for iGEM is sent
- A team of four master students is assembled under guidance of PI Wim
- March 03: Brainstorming for subjects starts
- March 24: PI's Marjan and Yves join the team
- April 22: Three subjects are chosen, and a presentation is prepared
- May 03: Our iGEM application is officially accepted
- May 04: Presentation on possible subjects for PI Wim
- May 06: Six PhD students and one advisor join our team
- May 17: First meeting
- May 31: We have our subject!
- The work gets divided into four work packages, and team members are assigned
- June 15: Fablab is contacted to be a partner for 3D printing our collector, they accepted
- June 29: Abstract is written and added to site
- July 07:
- July 18: Our stay in America has been booked
- July 19: Work package 'shape' decides to use Autodesk Fusion 360 to shape the water collector
- July 22: Prof Dan Fernandez (CSUMB), who makes fog catchers, is interested to work with us
- August 01: First 3D model of water collector prototype: dome with a gutter to collect the water. Printed the first prototype.
- August 04: New water collector shape with holes to distribute the water.
- August 15: The info video is made and put on the website
- August 19: We successfully dissolved 0.55g PLA in 8ml DMF at 80-90 deg. C (68.75 g/L) and precipitated it by pouring the solution into room temperature EtOH (disolol, denatured)
- August 20: Filament precipitated and washed with ethanol (cf. 19/09).
- August 22: A brainstorm on how to stack the collectors (not geometrically feasible :( ).
- August 30: Our first batch of PLA is delivered. Brainstorming on a new stackable water collector. Only holes on the bottom and top with a cavity under the dome.
- September 01:
- The first batch of biotin is delivered: the work on the filament can begin!
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Steven, our advisor, met up with the EPFL team in Lausanne, Switserland. They immediately bonded
- The first batch of biotin is delivered: the work on the filament can begin!
- September 07: We collaborated with the iGEM Virginia team by filling in their survey
- September 12: Biotin should be soluble in DMF at 1.7 g/L at least (more at higher temperatures), also in EtOH at 0.8 g/L so be sure to saturate the washing solution as well (see 'Experimental Measurement and Modeling of the Solubility of Biotin in Six Pure Solvents at Temperatures from 298.15 K to 333.85 K' by Su et al.). Solubilising solution for 1.375g PLA: 20 mL DMF + 50 mg biotin (to saturation), Precipitating solution (washing solution is identical): 50 mL EtOH + 40 mg biotin.
- September 13:
- September 14:
- We printed three different prototypes of our water collector
- We scaled the filament up to 10x. A slightly temperature raise was necessary to dissolve the PLA (145°C instead of 130°C on plate). When precipitating in ethanol, a rather glutinous substance was received on top of some big flakes that could be recuperatied: recuperated substance was dried, and ethanol with DMF was stored overnight at room temperature.
- September 15:
- Our crowdfunding page is live!
- The filament sample (cf. 14/09) was decanted and centrifuged (6 falcons). PLA-biotin was harvested (pellet) and was set to dry at 70°C overnight.
- September 18: We made a temperature and humidity sensor with a Raspberry Pi so we can observe the environment while testing our 3D shape
- September 20: The water collector without biotin was tested for its water collecting efficiency
- September 21: We met with Winnie from ReaGent
- September 23:
- September 24: We made an experimental set up with a humidifier and our temperature and humidity sensor (cf. 15/09) to test the water collection of our shape
- September 26: We tried our INP: it works!
- September 29: A logo has been designed. Shape design now includes a screw cap to fit on a plastic bottle.
- October 01: Developed a new 3D design, with an active surface area that is almost 20 times larger than the previous (third) version
- October 02: New 3D design made by weaving ribbons (let the inner artist go!).
- October 05: New filament batch: 13.75 g PLA, 1000 mg Biotin in 200 mL DMF. Precipitation solution: 200 mL EtOH, 200 mg biotin, washing solution: 50 mL EtOH, 40 mg biotin.
- October 07: 3Ders did a press article on our project.
- October 09: We started coating the water collector with biotin. Solvent with PLA and biotin is poured over the water collector and left to dry under the laminar air cabinet.
- October 10: Digital Trends did a press article on our project
- October 12: Testing four water collectors with four treatments: INP + INP_NC-mSA2, RFP + INP_NC-mSA2, INP_RC-mSA2 and mGFPuv2-mSA2. Each collector is sawn in half, one half receives a treatment and the other half is the control. The water collectors are placed overnight in the controlled humidified chamber.
- October 13: Another press article, this time by Made in Oost-Vlaanderen
- October 16:
- The Chinese press also did an article on our project!
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Measuring the amount of water that was collected on the Dewpal's
- October 17:
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Running the proof-of-concept experiments with the microscopic slides.
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Running the proof-of-concept experiments with the microscopic slides.
- October 18:
- Measuring the amount of water that was collected on the microscopic slides.
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Working hard on the deadline for wiki freeze
- National television picked up on our project. In the video, you see our translation of the Dutch video.
- October 26: We're off to America!
