Week 1 (23/06/14)

Aim: This week our main aim was to provide everyone with a basic understanding of synthetic biology, due to many of our team members having a limited biological background. This was comprised of some talks from our advisor as well as practice sessions in the laboratory in order to familiarise our selves with the basic techniques that would be needed throughout the project.

Monday 23/6/14

Today comprised of background talks by our supervisor, outlining the basics of DNA replication; transcription; translation. We also had a discussion about basic process of cell growth and the phases that are involved. We also completed the about our lab form.

Tuesday 24/6/14

Today Randy Redford came to the university to talk to us about IGEM and to give us some advice on how to proceed with the project. Randy also gave a lecture on synthetic biology and how it could be used in the future.

Wednesday 25/6/14

Today was spent researching into previous teams projects. This involved looking into the previous winners projects; their wiki’s and their posters to see what was required for a winning project.

Thursday 26/6/14

Today we made competent TOP10 cells (see the attached protocol). These are the cells we used in the future experiments.

Friday 27/6/14

Today we transformed (See the attached protocol) some of the competent cells with DNA from the registry to confirm the competency of our cells. This also taught us the basic technique of Transformation.