Team:SDU-Denmark/Tour30

Process

"When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do." - Walt Disney

On the 20^th of March, the team was assembled and we had our first meeting on the 25^th where some of us met each other for the first time. A lot of expectations had to be matched, and we spent the next few weeks getting to know each other through team building.

In the beginning the biggest process was to come up with an idea. Several brainstorming methods were used, but the list of ideas suddenly became endless and an abatement process had begun! At our first introduction to the wet lab work, at the BioBrick workshop at DTU on the 2^nd to 4^th of May, we had cut the list down to just four ideas, which was discussed with the other two Danish iGEM teams attending the workshop; from the University of Copenhagen and the Technical University of Denmark. A few days after the workshop we finally decided on the project: Edible coli!

The next few weeks we spent researching about how to design our system and the possibilities of our idea. The idea slowly evolved and we decided on which bricks to use from the iGEM Registry of Standard Biological Parts and which bricks to make ourselves.

Mid July we finally began working in the wet lab, starting out with a crash course organized by our instructors. Since then, we have been working day and night both in- and outside the laboratory. We have all learned a lot during the summer and have had some diversity by all being, more or less, part of both the wet and dry lab process. Throughout the project we have all helped each other, but the main responsibilities have been divided as follows:

Wet lab

• Plasmid constructions: Martin, Camilla, Anne, Ulrika, Signe, Victoria, Jens Jakob, Daniel and Sarah (the whole team)
• USER cloning: Daniel
• Flow cytometry (FACS): Signe
• Growth experiments: Martin, Victoria and Signe
• Worm experiment: Martin and Jens Jakob
• Western blots: Victoria

Dry lab

• Modelling: Sarah and Jens Jakob
• Primer design: Daniel and Ulrika
• Protein design: Camilla
• Sequence analysis: Jens Jakob and Daniel
• Policy and practices: Anne, Signe and Victoria
• Video adventure: Daniel and Ulrika
• Wiki design: Sarah
• Wiki text: Martin, Camilla, Anne, Ulrika, Signe, Victoria, Jens Jakob, Daniel and Sarah (the whole team)

Courses and workshops

Biobrick workshop at DTU (2^nd of May - 4^th of May)

Biobrick workshop at DTU. Our team was lucky to participate in the BioBrick workshop at DTU in Copenhagen, which took place over a full weekend in the spring of 2014. The program for the weekend included safety, USER cloning, general information on iGEM, wiki design and editing, and social events. Our team had not been in the wet-lab at that time, some had not even had a pipette in hands before, so this weekend was a really good introduction to the laboratory with a good mix of theory and practice. We learned a lot and had very much fun - many thanks to the DTU-Denmark team for teaching us how to make USER cloning and for hosting a great workshop.

Interactive lecture: How to find information (26^th of May)

We had a visit from people from the library who taught us how to optimize the search of information in different sources, such as Web of Science, Compendex, Encyclopedia of Molecular Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine, Ullmann, etc. We want to thank them a lot for their time and great help!

Enneagram.

The enneagram: Discover your type (5^th of June)

We had a whole days course on “The enneagram”, which is a tool to identify types of personalities. We did this to strengthen the personal bonds inside the group, to become aware of our own up- and downsides and to gain awareness of how to use this knowledge in favor of our team and project. Thank you very much to Jane, from the company “Trivselsforum” for her help!

Ethics workshop at KU (21^st of August)

Ethics workshop at KU. Three girls from our team participated in the Ethics Workshop in Copenhagen organized by the UNIK-Denmark team. Our project encourages many ethical issues and the workshop was therefore very suitable and beneficial. We learned a lot about dealing with ethical issues in synthetic biology and got many good inputs to an ethics-related discussion about our project. In addition to this we also got in touch with relevant people and organizations that have been able to help us continue with our human practices. We would like to thank the UNIK-Denmark team for the invitation and their work - it was a very nice workshop.

iGEM meet-up in London hosted by YSB (1st of September - 2nd of September)

iGEM meet-up in London. Our team was very lucky and extremely pleased to be able to participate in the UK iGEM Meet-up organized by YSB (Young Synthetic Biologists) in collaboration with the UCL-team. The event was an excellent preparation for the Giant Jamboree because we could rehearse our presentation and make a first try to design a poster. In addition, we got the opportunity to hear about other teams' projects. We also participated in 6 different workshops: Intellectual Property, Human Practices, Characterization, Public Engagement, Citizen Science and BioArt. The other iGEM teams were very helpful in giving us constructive criticism and many good ideas for future work. Our team gained very much by attending the event - It was both fun and educational. We would like to thank YSB (Young Synthetic Biologists) and the UCL-team for two fantastic days in London.