Team:University of Alberta/14 September 2009

Meeting minutes: Membership reviews: Chongya, Qiwei and Dan -	If voted off team, stop being part of iGEM, won’t be traveling to aGEM or iGEM -	Chongya: did not fulfill minimum hours during any month, misrepresented how many hours she did. Haven’t seen her for a month. Vote: 18 in favor of rejection. -	Qiwei: he’s not checking e-mails or attending, umaware of what we’re doing and hasn’t contributed in over a month. Didn’t fulfill minimum hours. Vote: 18 in favor of rejection -	Dan: Lack of involvement in the lab, no record in sign in book. Since changed to volunteer status, haven’t heard about any fulfillment of commitment – seen once in a month. Didn’t take enough initiative. Paid $2500, we haven’t got the return for that, don’t spend more. Dan: did hours today – in lab for 6 hours. Prior week was on vacation because we all were. 3 hours week before that. Work with business team on media contacting. Tried to reply to e-mails. Did take initiative on videos. Yes rejection: 17 No rejection: 3

Travel: 47 passenger charter bus – 19 students and 3 advisors going. Mike is driving. Not driving because AIF didn’t want to pay for 8 cars…they knew it’d be cheaper…just didn’t want the forms??? Leave 3:30 fri, return 1:30 Sunday

Presentation comments:

Intro – more hype of syn bio, sell more HS – briefer concepts LS assembly – transition better to lambda red – do x and check mark like Justin Take out bar graph on essential genes list Explain figures better on minimal list analysis – separate slide of function pie chart Justin – anchor slides – jargon, specifics, too much detail – take out that slide, but still mention labwork done testing them. Replace with bullet slide of what we had to optimize – graph it? Do animation of cutting of bead and circularizing Change title on slide 22 Talk slower (Doug liked fast talking though, Mike disagrees) Make sure we know a point form list of key topics for each slide Point to things on slide, but make contact with audience Small scale assembly – include other figures putting things together Each presenter meet with Mike tomorrow. Lots of slide, combine slides if possible - combine powerline pictures Change literature names to methods in essential genes table Add background/title page Doug: be correct in what you say Clarify modeling is part of organism design Change darkness of arrows in model to show flux changes – but too confusing? Use white letters on blue not black Put flux balance on the slide itself, and fine print of what you used (footnote) Make it clear whats results of modeling (how much work and how useful it was) – big flashing 117? Make clear that large scale stuff is conceptual Mention in vivo contruction (transforming big stuff is hard) Small scale – say why traditional assembly is slow A/B end is confusing – pick one. Clarify heptamer is 1000nt each Include eppendorf magnet slide Cut human practices Clarify photos are our stuff, not the internet Picture of chips with scale Say exactly what robot does Cut slide of stuff done in other labs – just say chips are growing technology that we’re using in a unique capacity. Mention device with programmable path so could be more adaptable/automatic/programmable – get photos of the machine. Change colours in chip animation to get more contrast Opening: beginning of summer – what is it synthetic biology wants to accomplish – big grand challenge is construction of artificial cell. What will it take? 3 things – need reliable in silico approach for predicting how to design an artifical organism. Need reliable way to go in and change the chromosome on a grand scale quickly. Need much much faster way of being able to assemble complex genetic elements. What would it take to make the simplest of all organisms? What do we know about how simple we can make things. Mention why its in Ecoli – know the most, most amenable to experimental analysis. Include this big picture in the title Show team photo of team at end. Current intro flips tween minimal genome to method, unclear. David – in silico metabolic simulation/design. We don’t understand how living things work, need to be able to make predictions and test them – rapid computer based method because we can’t guess right. Mike agrees show something of the complexity of the model – show stoichiometric model.Wow factor, don’t have to understand. Mention testing predictions to show model validity Likes pie chart but not bar graph, but black writing doesn’t show. Simplify pie chart by combining categories Note 117 new genes are prediction not for sure – a clue Colours in large sale animation – Mike has better slide, show small piece replacing larger piece Small scale – need to move more smoothly between slides, show connections – include overview. Information too broken up onto many slides Phosphorylation in PCR – don’t mention?? No DNA sequences should be shown Typo in standardization – z not s Automation – Do it yourself – repeatability BioFab in there ! Better colour contrast! Pennys and rabbit slide is cute but takes too much thought – slows it down, remove Maybe Show pictures of Velcro biobytes with kids Work on conclusions – intermediate and far future – need visuals too – ex USB key in computer program and have synthesized chromosome the next day. Ex educational kits for kids to make stuff, ex: rapid protyping for synth, biology experiments

Change title on poster! Do virtual poster

Thinking in grand scale and made accomplishments  ‘These guys have really thought about this’.

We have transformed the universe 

23minutes