Team:University of Alberta/10 August 2009

iGEM Meeting Minutes Aug 10th

Kalon: cloning trp genes into a plasmid, for submission as biobricks. Four have worked for sure. Will also do five into the same plasmid in the next week.

Mitch: Got real mCherry from Dr. Campbell, did PCR with that, did one with scar sequence and transformed today to test function. Working on backbone to test reboot. Recombineering: PCR verified part put in and still not where its supposed to be. Trying it again.

Julia: pretty much done PCRing digesting and purifying, did last 28 this weekend

Justin: Trying to PCR out kan, failed 4 times. Will try redesigning primers. Tried different PCR cycle numbers (25 and 30 are pretty good) and varying dNTPs concentration to determine what gives best ligation product ratios, to optimize USER version 2. The new USER system works with pfuCX and fusion, but not pfu. Advantages is its just an hour, half the price. Do get ligatable ends from it.

Eric: chips came in today. Will start testing right away. They look really cool.

David: Validating modeling in the wet lab. Told model to find reactions where if you delete one gene the organism survives but if take out two then the cell dies. Try double deletions in cells to see if get the predicted results. Coming up with procedures this week, will start in lab next week.

Website: are we dropping it? Updating? The function has changed into something used across iGEM years. Its staying as is for now, may change later. For the wiki, we’ll stick with the current format. Ensure that wiki stuff pertaining to website should also be there (esp. in case wiki freezes). Didn’t change wiki header yet.

Business update: Mike approved to send stuff off to AET. Mike changed all the LifeBytes to ‘BioBytes’. We’ll have travel money. Yay.

Sent stuff to faculty of science regarding PR - Wayne is gone with Steve and Mike and Qiwei to Fort Mac, but when back will get more info about using his speedcode –would need to buy stuff soon.

Paris: They replied, said thanks for interest, they’ll send us more details later. Jenn will pass it on to Amber.

Lethbridge: We recent a document with the sequence files for what they want in a plasmid. Doesn’t seem too bad. Forwarded to full timers. Let David know what you think. There are quite a few of restriction sites that may be problematic (Nsi, pst, xba etc…may need to use different enzymes). No updates from them about modeling.

Human Practice: Amber will print pamphlets and be in contact with Julia regarding WISEST. Emera will help with printing. Presentation stuff including survey stuff is posted on the wiki.

Volunteers: Some have gotten e-mail saying hours not fulfilled. Keep up the work. Contact full timers if problems. Make up time if missing it. Three hours a week isn’t that much.

Round table: Should start making team t-shirts - takes a month or more to make them. Kalon has made T-shirts before. Was $18 a person. Need to fix logo so that it looks better when printed on a shirt. We will keep the name the same, too hard to change it now. After iGEM perhaps the name should be changed.

Do we refer to ourselves as lifebytes or biobytes? No one really cares. Emera will pick. Both have been used a lot by other people. Stick with Lifebytes for now (). Mike’s reason for wanting to change the name: because lifebytes has been used a lot and he just really hates the name.