Team:Newcastle/Meetings/4 March 2009

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04/03/2009 - IGEM Meeting

Agenda of the Meeting

Previous action points
Discuss about the timeline briefly- altered to give another week before a decision is made on final idea for project.
Check off things that have been done.
Discuss top three ideas:]
- Sequester metals
- Skin repairer
- Bio-memory
Any other business

Chair: Craig
Minutes: Goksel
Attendees: Jen, Dan, Matthew, Arun, Goksel, Hanny, Craig
The meeting started at 16.00pm and finished at 17.20pm

Minutes of the Meeting

The meeting started at 16.00pm and finished at 17.20pm
Two new team members will be joining to the team until the end of this week.
While populating the wikis try to use styles and page templates as much as possible.
We should send an email to the team if we can’t make for a meeting.
For the IGEM presentations it would be nice to use flash. Having power point presentations would be good. In the presentation emphasize how good we know the area and how we used our skills to achieve our idea.
Top three ideas were discussed
- Bio Memory:
  - Advantages: Long lasting memory, would be good to say “Hello” using our memory
  - Disadvantages: The amount of data we can store may not be much.
  - We may store the spores on a plaster to save their positions and use it on another agar plate to display the same data.
  - We can use nutritions and other signals to wake the spores in a timed manner.
  - Do a research on how to get the data into the bacteria and out again.
  - Is it possible to make coloured spores? In this case we do not have to germinate them.
- Sequester metals
  - Advantages: Implementation of stochastic switch, it can be used in both water and soil.
  - Sin operon regulates spoA gene to control the sporulation. It can be engineered to provide stochastic effect.
  - Should the bacteria move towards the metal or should they just grow everywhere? We need to improve the idea.
  - PH level of the B. subtilis is in the normal range
  - Getting the heavy metals to a level where it is useful would be a good achievement.
  - Do a research on if it is ok to leave the spores in the environment after all.
  - There are some plants that get the metals but they need to be harvested.
  - Germination genes need to be knocked out so that metals will stay in spores.
  - Can termites be used to eat spores?
- Skin repairer
  - It has been pointed a similar idea may have already been done.Check the previous IGEM projects for similarity. We plan to use sporulation and it may add some difference to previous projects.
  - Advantages: has a medical application
  - (as above) we can use sporulation for storage and for something good to model.
  - The HA synthesis has already been done in Widner et al. 2005 (below)
  - The S. aureus signalling proteins have been sequenced Otto et al. 1998.
  - Also it may be good to model the effects of signalling proteins as there are four different typer which each enable their endogenous Agr pathway but inhibit pathways for other signals.
  - Disadvantages: It may be hard to get the B.subtilis to secrete the right part of the signalling protein (AgrD gene) as it needs clevage and further modification by other genes.
    - might this be a good backup?

In the university we can find the support in Fluorescence Imaging, Cytometry, mRNA and Proteomicssubjects
Jen will be away for 4 weeks.

Action Points

Correct the address details at IGEM web site - Jen, Neil
Jessica needs to apply for funding – Jessica, Jen, Neil
Arun needs to apply for funding – Arun, Jen, Neil
Setup file upload permissions to the internal wiki – Dan
Setup security to access to the internal wiki – Dan
Populate the internal wiki – Students
IGEM project idea will be finalized next week – IGEM team
Specify a date for BioBricks tutorial – Students
Every student should pick a simple BioBrick from the repository and try to understand what it does, which genes it uses etc. – Students
Add the references of the papers we read to the wiki. Also try to put brief abstracts from these papers. - Students
Setup the lab notebook and record what you are doing, how you are thinking etc. - Students
Populate the wiki with the work we did for the ideas’ feasibility, how we got the top 12 ideas and selected the top 3. – Students
Give some history to the new team members about our ideas – Students
Aim for awards that can be achieved regardless of the idea like the best wiki, the best poster, the best presentation award etc. - Students
Watch the top six presentations form last year’s IGEM.– Students
Investigate previous IGEM projects for similarities to our ideas. List the similar ones and highlight how our ideas differ from them. – Students
For each idea create a storyboard explaining how the product would be used for biology with a scenario, would that be a good deliverable project, in which ways we engineer the bacteria , different usages of scenarios. Present each storyboard for 15 minutes. - Students
Invite the new team members to the internal meeting on 9th of March at 17.00pm - Students
Bio Memory - Do a research on how to get the data into the bacteria and out again. - Students
Bio Memory - Is it possible to make coloured spores? - Students
Sequester metals - Do a research on if it is ok to leave the spores in the environment after all. - Students
Sequester metals - Can termites be used to eat spores? - Students

Things to Remember for Later

Plan a fallback position for the idea selected. Even if it is not possible to finish it fully, major aspects of the project can be done. Try to break the idea into modules. We should be able to present our full plan even if we can’t manage to finish all the modules.
MSc students should find some parts for their thesis.
Save one of the ideas as a backup.