Team:University of Alberta/16 August 2009

iGEM Meeting Minutes Aug 16th

Lab updates:

PCR team: done PCRing. Won’t PCR anything more until more progress with the rest of the project

Kalon: trp amplication from pAB pBA. Will be troubleshooting. Not here next week though. Trp genes are in biobrick plasmids ready for submission. They look good from the test digest, will sequence too to confirm.

Max: reboot is sequencing because things aren’t working. Recombineering people are on vacation.

Justin: Dumped UPASTE – doesn’t work well and tired of optimizing. Done optimizing USER, now constructing stuff – try maximum construct as soon as stuff comes in. Start building plasmids by end of this weekend, using selectable markers that were cloned into pAB and pBA. Should have all in both by tomorrow (had previously only worked in one plasmid). RFP is in both.

Eric: First attempt to attach gene to anchor on bead didn’t work, but experimenter error. The central washing chamber evaporates really quick (like 2 min) and that sucks DNA out of the outer wells. Will attempt more when second anchor comes in (tomorrow or day after)

Who is going on vacation: Max, Kalon, Enoch and Mitch

Volunteer hours: Make up your hours or someone will hunt you down. Potential to work full time to make up your time.

Bioinformatics: The design is done, waiting on primers to actually do it. Should have everything by tomorrow, be done in a few days. Will do powerpoint for next meeting. Max says David will need to find recA- strain. Lethbridge: they wanted the final sequence of their construct., That wasn’t sent off cus we haven’t put together all their sequence info. They haven’t sent the DNA yet as far as we know. David will ask for it to be sent ASAP. We’ll send the sequence info back ASAP. Dan will help with the Lethbridge plasmid

Website and wiki: no update. Now have some new sponsor logos up,. Format won’t change unless there’s a disaster.

Funding: David talked to Medicine Hat College – Dean of Science wants to give us $500, but wants official invoice – how?? Needed ASAP, just to prove money is to U of A iGEM team. Emera will talk to Christina Pelletier, Doug will come. Mike away from Wed to Aug 31st. Medicine Hat college also want us to present to their students, David will.

ARC and AET haven’t replied, and they’re Mike’s contacts. Doug says keep trying to contact Yurgen, and if not have Doug try to contact him.

AET – contact was Daphne. Same difficulty getting in contact. Doug doesn’t know her well…may want to get Mike to give her a call before he goes on vacation. Without the AET money we’re covered for everything but the actual jamboree – getting people to Boston.

We have direct account with IDT, will get discount from them – we can order DNA from them through that account, until Oct 31st. Should be a lot cheaper – 20% discount. 19 cents a base pair for regular oligos, U of A price was 29 cents.

Shirts (Kalon) – Knockout logo from Oscar? If you want to design one, do it by next week, we’ll vote next week. We can currently afford them too  David is in contact with ThinkGeek.com, who may give us a discount. Subtitles could do it too. Oscar can get the design digital for us. Tentative yes to Oscars design, we’ll finalize next week when we see the digital design. Have iGEM 09 on shoulder? List sponsors on the back or have logos of sponsors?

Human practices – Amber needs to print pamphlets (ASAP for WISEST kids) Will contact teachers next week.

aGEM: Rooming list is made, Talk to Emera if there’s problems. Agenda from AIF is out, we don’t need to get to Banff until 8, we could leave at 3:00 ish. Each team does their own transportation booking – we could rent five or six cars, its cheaper than renting a bus, and we can drive wherever while we’re there. People may offer to use their own cars, but AIF will pay for it, so we might as well rent cars? But you’d make more money if you used your own car? Bus last year was due to University’s driving policy - for events requiring driving, the driver must fulfill a long list of requirements. We never looked into this for Lethbridge…remain ignorant? Look into cost of park passes if we have individual cars; that could also be more expensive than just one pass for a bus. If they’re paying for it, why do we care if bus costs more? Make money from using our own cars, more comfy….

Each team gets a VIP package – one member gets everything paid for. Hold off on deciding, Mike will decide.

Presentation team decision: Usually about 5 present. We will all work on the presentation, but the presenters will work on it extra…

Presenters: Justin, Max, David, Julia, Kelly Understudies: Kalon, Eric, Amber,

Maybe shouldn’t have so many people? Transitions take a lot of time, its only 20min. So 4 would be better than five. Make the presentation before we decide for sure? Especially useful to make presentation now to figure out where we need more data. Will take lots of work, so start now.

Set up meeting times to build the presentation. Friday is best? Emera and David will work on picking a time. Will contact Julia and Amber so we can come too.

iGEM: Attendance fee has gone up by ~$4000 !! $175 per undergrad attending, $375 per grad student and advisor, in US dollars. Used to be $1625 per team. The registration fee is on top of that. We can cover the attendance fee, its just the travel that’s pending on AET.

We are in the Foundational Advance track. Variance request underway. Make sure that what we want to submit that’s not compliant is in the variance request – focus on that so it gets out sooner, so we know sooner if its rejected. Everyone in the lab is working on it.

Paris: Haven’t heard back

Roundtable: NINT account – we still don’t have the speed code. We need a list and Wayne (?) orders it. Kelly has a list. Kelly is on vacation soon though (?)…needed soon.