Team:University of Alberta/23 August 2009

Meeting Minutes Aug 24th

Advisors announcement: This is an expensive project (people, reagents, travel etc). We didn’t begin the project with all the resources we needed, and we have raised a lot BUT …budget from AIF is 60% cut from previous years. Priorities were: paying students first, secondly buying reagents, and travel to the conference third. We hoped to raise enough for all of this, by getting money from advanced education and technology…but lots of government changes have occurred. Travel fees have been removed from gov budgets…thus they can’t fund us to go to iGEM. We can’t send everyone to Boston. Mike and Doug will decide who goes. And more funding may come in. aGEM is covered though. Per person its $870 for flight, $120 for 3 nights accommodations. $175 for attendance. Don’t know exactly how many people will be going.

Lab updates: Long meeting next Monday (Aug 31), you should be there! There will be presentations, final update on all the science. Set up team to continue in the fall. Kalon, Max and Mitch on vacation until end of next week. If you’re coming on weekend, check ahead with Justin/Erin/Kelly

New lab! We’ll be in micro349 – shared with micro 470 – we have only half the room, and can’t come in Wed pm because class is there.

Mitch – cloned some bricks we’ll need and working on trp stuff

Justin – Lethbrige primers ordered. Should be easy to make, just need three bricks. Made first construct, transformed in, have colonies, will screen and sequence. Some problems with self dimerization with USER2.0 (was there in USER1 too).

Eric – built 5 genes using beads on chip. Twice in parallel. Both worked well. 8ug of bead used, 160ug is used when not on a chip. Tiny amount of DNA though. Will try to get robot working tomorrow

James – has a robot that’s a lot bigger – lego  Makes a lot of whirling noises. Supposed to move beads well to well.

David – will present next week. Working on testing model results

Full timers have started working on presentation – made outline and compiling info

Shirts – need graphic file ASAP. Oscar made logo, but need it computerized. Oscar will do it this week. Do colour and we can change to black and white later

Haven’t received Lethbridge DNA yet- need it really soon! But will only take 2 days to actually make it.

Human practices – pamphlet were delivered to WISEST, high schools were faxed about letting us present to them

Roundtable – if you send stuff to people, let Emera know.

Doug brought stock for combining knockouts, watched Shannon from Raivio’s lab do one this morning and it looks really easy. Every one of their summer students has had success with it 

Still missing lots of people, will point out people next week.

For going to iGEM, have people pay a bit themselves so more people can go? Its being considered. Looking at the budget to see what can be afforded.

Jen Hill’s Presentation

Discussed schedule for aGEM and viewed the aGEM website