I was able to complete scripts for three construction sites for the restriction digest activity that I planned out yesterday. The three construction sites will be used for creating a circuit from four parts: Promoter, RBS, terminator as well as a gene of the user’s choice. Currently it will only function for a general activity so I will have to modify it for specific missions. The construction sites consist of:
1. Single construction site for ligating two parts of the circuit together. These two parts must have been cut with the proper restriction enzymes to place one before the other ie. Promoter cannot be placed behind RBS.
2. Multiple construction site that works the same as the first but with two parts already together that must be connected to another part.
3. Multiple construction site with three pieces together already. There is also an option to ligate Promoter/RBS with Gene/Terminator, which can actually be considered a shortcut as long as users understand what they are doing.
One flaw in the activity is that you are only able to cut each piece once in the donor and recipient tubes, but I thought it would be unnecessarily tedious to cut at each step of construction once they have already succeeded in doing it once, but this can always be changed although I do not plan to in the upcoming week. It would involve possibly doubling the amount of comparisons within the donor and recipient tubes avatars may use to determine what they wish to cut. I also began to modify the recipient and donor tube scripts in order for them to cooperate with the three construction sites so they are no longer fully functional as I continue to change them. I have determined the names of the products an avatar may obtain from performing the activity so now I will have to create them and request they be given to inventory, which I hope to complete by next week and will be starting tomorrow.
I will most likely finish the restriction digest notecard in parallel with its corresponding activity and I will be sending these notecards to Mandy once again to look over and examine their validity, which I plan to have done by Monday (July 13). I was also able to construct the basic plates for streaking for the bacterial transformation activity.
I was also able to complete the script for the sequencing station as per Mandy’s request and it will now give any avatar who drops ‘Amplified Colison E2’ into the sequencing object a notecard, which as of now does not contain any useful information. I will be adding various other amplified DNA products as objects to give back sequencing for on Friday, which may continue into next week.