<a href="#1August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date vlog left top"><span class="vlog">V</span><span>1</span></a>

<a href="#3August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date vlog top"><span class="vlog">V</span><span>3</span></a>

<a href="#4August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date top"><span>4</span></a>

<a href="#5August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date top"><span>5</span></a>

<a href="#8August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>8</span></a>

<a href="#9August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>9</span></a>

<a href="#10August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>10</span></a>

<a href="#11August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>11</span></a>

<a href="#12August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>12</span></a>

<a href="#15August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>15</span></a>

<a href="#16August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>16</span></a>

<a href="#17August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>17</span></a>

<a href="#18August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>18</span></a>

<a href="#19August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>19</span></a>

<a href="#22August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>22</span></a>

<a href="#23August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date vlog"><span>23</span></a>

<a href="#24August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date"><span>24</span></a>

<a href="#25August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date bottom"><span>25</span></a>

<a href="#26August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date bottom"><span>26</span></a>

<a href="#30August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date bottom"><span>30</span></a>

<a href="#31August" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date bottom right"><span>31</span></a>

<a href="#1September" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date left top"><span>1</span></a>

<a href="#2September" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date top"><span>2</span></a>

<a href="#5September" class="col-xs-1 calendar_link date top"><span>5</span></a>

<p id="pp">Today, we started the day meeting with Dr Paul James and Dr Chloe Singleton to recap our project idea, and the receive feedback from them on the approach we should be taking towards it, and how to better structure and word our CRISPR proposal. It was quite reassuring to have them both quite positive about our idea.</p>

<p id="pp">Leanne and Emily met with Dr Nicky King again to discuss what we have so far for the synthetic biology module we are writing. It was incredibly useful, as Dr King gave us advice on several different module structures we could look at and several other academics we could talk to. She seems very enthusiastic about our idea, offering to propose it to the Natural Sciences and the Biosciences committee at the start of first term to find out if it’s something we can implement.</p>

<p id="pp">We also redid headshots and our team photo, as everyone was present today and the previous image sizes were not appropriate for the wiki. We definitely like these ones, and it’s great to have the whole student side of the team together!</p>

<p id="pp">Today Dan and Pablo spoke to supervisors Dr Paul James and Dr Chloe Singleton about TRACR and selective advantages with methylation, Dr Singleton suggested we research into catabolic repression.</p>

<p id="pp">Andy made a human practices infographic and Joel made a GIF of Killer Red. Alice continued to work on the video documenting the visit to Judd High School.</p>

<p id="pp">We attended the ‘Britain Needs Scientists’ fair in the afternoon. We we able to interview students and teachers about their knowledge on Synthetic Biology to further our human practices work. We had our board game and sweet DNA display which enabled us to engage with more teachers about how to educate students on synbio.</p>

<p id="pp">After this, the lab team designed constructs for our Killer Red experiment choosing suitable parts from the iGEM registry.</p>

<p id="pp">Alice recorded and released the second episode of ‘Desert Island… Science?’ today. This time, she interviewed Dr Sara Burton, a senior Biosciences lecturer at the University of Exeter. Dr Mark Ramsdale also agreed to be interviewed for our series, and we have begun to reach out to people outside of the university so we can expand our series.</p>

<p id="pp">We also had a Skype session with the UCC iGEM team today, who were hilarious! They’ve said they’ll show us around Boston at the Jamboree as some of their current members have been on past teams, and we also sorted a collaboration with them for later down the line of testing out each others parts.</p>

<p id="pp">Today we got a lot of the Purdue collaboration done (Purdue wanted us to write summaries for their past project database), but we intend to get far more done over the coming weeks. Their whole idea of a database is really cool though, as it means it’ll be so much easier for future teams to look at relevant past projects, to find out what has previously been done and what can be built upon.</p>

<p id="pp">It was the first session back in the lab after doing the Interlab study too. Most of the team - Dan, Pablo, Eloise, Hannah, Andy and Jack - were in the lab at some point today. They resuspended Killer Red DNA from the iGEM parts we had been sent, then attempted to transform it into competent cells. They made 9 plates for incubation - positive and negative controls, 3 chloramphenicol resistance plates and 4 ampicillin resistance plates.</p>

<p id="pp">Beyond that, the day was mostly focused on designing parts and designing experiments.</p>

<p id="pp">Dr John Love, one of our lead supervisors, came back from a conference trip today. We met with him this morning (at 8am!!!) in Costa (so at least we could get some coffee) to discuss what we’ve done so far on lab work, human practises, wiki and modelling, and get some feedback. </p>

<p id="pp">He gave some incredibly useful advice on how we could expand our lab work more, looking at different ways to characterise the kill switches. In regards to human practises, he loves the board game (and gave us funding for 16 more physical copies), and suggested using surveys to quantify the impact of the board game on the students using it. He also agreed to take part in ‘Desert Island… Science?’ which is fantastic!</p>

<p id="pp">We’ll be meeting with Dr Love and Dr James, our two lead supervisors, in sub teams next Tuesday, so it’s time to start finalising who fits into what roles so we can organise those teams.</p>

<p id="pp">The KillerRed transformations from yesterday were unsuccessful - there was either no growth of 1-2 colonies on all the plates. However, we believe we know the error - we attempted to transform 1μl of DNA, which may be too low of a DNA concentration, so the transformations will be reattempted with 5μl.</p>

<p id="pp">Exciting news for ‘Desert Island… Science?’ today! We will officially be expanding outside of just academics based at the University of Exeter - Dr Jon Marles-Wright and Dr Thomas Howard, both academics at the University of Newcastle, have agreed to be interviewed for our series! We’ve sent out a few more messages, but haven’t had any more responses yet - fingers crossed for over the weekend!</p>

<p id="pp">Today was incredibly exciting in terms of our board game too - we received the 16 printed copies of BioMech, and they look incredible! We released a photo of the finalised board game on Twitter earlier, with this being the first time we’ve publically mentioned our board game, and the response has been fantastic so far! It really has been so wonderful how well it has been received!</p>

<p id="pp">We have also been in touch with The Sutton Trust in regards to the game, and they seem quite interested in the idea. Hopefully we will be able to sort something out with them in regards to widening participation.</p>

<p id="pp">The Killer Red transformations were successful this time, which is great news and means it was only a concentration issue and not a procedure error. The lab team today - Dan, Eloise, Emily, Jack and Pablo - worked on transforming Killer Orange into plasmids using a 3:1 ratio for insert to backbone. They made both ampicillin and chloramphenicol plates again for incubating the transformations. They also prepared more chloramphenicol stocks for future lab sessions.</p>

<p id="pp">Today, four of our team members (Alice, Joel, Andy and Jack) went on our second school visit to Colyton Grammar School based in Colyford, East Devon. They conducted a board game session with 26 students - our first board game session since having the final design printed - and gave out surveys so we could gauge the impact of the board game on the students.</p>

<p id="pp">We had a new work experience student join us today called Juliet - she’s a year 12 at the moment with a strong interest in Biology, and will be helping us out in and out of labs (but mostly in). Juliet will be joining the team for the next two weeks.</p>

<p id="pp">They also left behind three board games so the school could get extended use out of them, and continue to send us surveys on board game reception - we’re hoping to receive the first batch back within the next few days so we can get an idea of how effective the game is.</p>

<p id="pp">Due to some key members of the lab team being on the Colyton Grammer School visit, today was a slow lab day - we prepared some glycerol stocks using 500μl glycerol and 500μl E. coli culture and stored them.</p>

<p id="pp">More exciting news for ‘Desert Island… Science?’ today - Professor Richard Kitney of Imperial College London agreed to partake! Professor Kitney has been a visiting Professor at MIT since 1991, holds an OBE for his work, and is globally recognised as one of the leading researchers in the field of Synthetic Biology.</p>

<p id="pp">We also received the board game survey data back from Colyton Grammar School and have done a basic analysis on the results - overall, 77.8% of students reacted positively, saying they had enjoyed the board game (“It was a fun way for learning about synthetic biology.”) and/or had found the board game session educational (“It helped me remember most of the information because it was fun and engaging.”).</p>

<p id="pp">The lab team attempted Q5 site-directed mutagenesis today using a two-step PCR and a 1 in 10 dilution for the primers (10μl primer : 90μl water). The products have been transformed into competent E. coli DH5α cells and left in the 37^oC incubator overnight. They also made a table to document the contents of the freezer box (a mix of DNA and PCR products).</p>

 

<p id="pp">Today was predominantly focused around talking with other iGEM teams and organising collaborations - we had a Skype session with Cardiff and talked about our projects and current progress. We also spoke with Westminster over Twitter about the possibility of collaborating.</p>

<p id="pp">Yesterday’s attempt at Q5 site-directed mutagenesis turned out to be unsuccessful, so we will be re-attempting that today. We also measured the concentrations of DNA we had for various promoters, terminators, minipreps, etc, and made a table for future reference so we can track how much we have left.</p>  

<p id="pp">5μl of the digestion and ligation products were transformed into competent E. coli cells and left to incubate overnight. We also did a PCR and gel electrophoresis, and left the transformed products to incubate overnight.</p>

<p id="pp">It was mostly just a day of general progress on all areas today though, with people working in the lab, on the wiki, pushing through modelling and making progress on human practises.</p>

 

<a id="Section_link" href="#24August" style="display:block;margin:20px auto 0 auto;width:14px;"><span style="color:#47BCC2;font-size: 25px;" class="glyphicon glyphicon-menu-down" aria-hidden="true"></span></a>

 

</div>