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From 2014.igem.org

Preparing for iGEM

Easter preparations

• first team meeting
• oxford trip

Crash Course

Week 1 - The Big Start

• M: Intro by the Bosses
• The Randy Rettberg Phenomena
• Building Bridges - team bonding!

• T: Intro to Engineering and Standards
• Jon Sayers, the man behind Taq

• W: History of Syn Bio
• The Weird and Wonderful!

• Th:Botanical Brainstorming Gardens
• The Plasmid Conundrum- which one do you have?
• St John Chop House

• F: Imaging- Confocals to Focus

Week 2 - Crash Course Continuation

• M: Tour de France!

• T:Continuation of Plasmid Conundrum
• PCR practical

• W:Barbecue!

Brainstorming Ideas: Imagination on the loose!

Many weird and wonderful ideas came up from Radio Plants to Self-reproducible diagnostic tests.
After some heated debates, dead alley ways, some highs and grief we narrowed down to some final ideas.
Here, for your amusement, is some of what iGEMCambridge 2014 could have been:

Mar-Cam-tia, your Desktop Lamp

Engineer the luciferin-luciferase system that the 2010 Cambridge team put into 'E. glowli' into Marchy, and show the dodgy kickstarter dude how it should really be done. This could be linked to the plant's circadian rhythm to ensure only nigh time glowing.

Mar-Cam-tia, the volatile factory with some twists

Add metabolic pathways that produce perfumed volatiles (eg geraniol, limonene, geosmin). Or insect repellents/attractants such as E-beta-farnesene to repel aphids and attract ladybirds, or bombykol to attract moths from miles away.

Mar-Cam-tia, the Night Catcher

Production could be linked to circadian clock to change smell (or species of moth attracted) throughout the day - ie Mar-Cam-tia as a clock. There could be a link to Marchy's air pores.

Mar-Cam-tia, the ultimate multipurpose phytoELISA platform

An antigen receptor based on an antibody would be expressed on the surface of Marchantia, and a potentially novel signalling pathway (perhaps involving cAMP production or a tyrosine kinase dimer formation mechanism) engineered such that when the antigen of interest binds with the receptor, downstream events induce an obvious reporting process such as chromoprotein expression, luciferin-mediated glowing, morphological changes or the release of a characteristic smell. Qualitative disease testing with a product that replicates itself out of water and sunshine instead of a single use ELISA that costs $300! Bring on the Start Up!

Mar-Cam-tia, a new eco-friendly touch screen

If chromoprotein expression can be triggered in arbitrary cells by irradiating them with a far-red laser to induce the phytochrome signalling pathway in them, then thalli could be written on with light and an image formed. Different lasers, different colour chromoproteins = full palette of laser-plant-pens. No paper waste

Marchantia, change-o-morpha

A morphological study of Marchy: Can we engineer shape? Can we disrupt the normal course of growth and shape formation? Maybe we can shape it like a cauliflower.

Taming the Beast

Sporlulation is a bio-containment issue. If Marchy was less sexually prolific, we would have less of a problem. It would also be interesting and aesthetically pleasing to have sex specific expression of colour. (quite some controversy about colour selection)