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Team:Paris Bettencourt/Newsletter3
From 2014.igem.org
| iGEM 2014Weekly newsletter |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
Goettingen
PROJECT UPGRADE |
Last month, we had a barbecue for our iGEM team the day after we had another barbecue with the whole GZMB (the Center for Molecular Biosciences in Göttingen) and aside from the delicious meal, many funny things happened. First there was our attempt to warm our bread (it was couple of baguettes) on the grill that ended with the bread being actually grilled along with the meat. Then, at some point sambuca was being served in shot glasses and eventually also on the table. And there was also a rabbit. One of our lab mates saw it first and, very discretely, proceeded to shout “A rabbit!, a rabbit!”, and Mr. Rabbit was just chilling on the grass, looking at us humans finally enjoying ourselves after so many weeks of pipettes and Petri dishes –which of course is not to say that we don’t enjoy ourselves with our pipettes and Petri dishes, but only that Mr. Rabbit saw us enjoying ourselves after that-. Some started to get close to get a picture of that shy and wonderful display of nature. A prudent voice then mentioned the risks of getting close to the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, but no one really seemed to listen. Then one of our lab mates got too close and Mr. Rabbit decided to retreat. |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
Lika Cesar Bresil
OUR HUMAN PRACTICE |
The LIKA-CESAR-BRASIL is participating of iGEM human practices. For this porpose, our first action was to organized The First Workshop in Synthetic Biology and Technology Innovation in Recife. The focus of the workshop was the integration among Robotics, Health, Genetics and Information Technology. Also for the human practices, the team conducted the campaign against breast cancer in Dona Lindu Park and Boa Viagem Beach. We also enjoying coconut water, sea and a beautiful blue sky. Besides taking advantage of the natural scenery, we spread information about our work and advances in synthetic biology! Working and having fun is our motto! The survey of breast cancer is available at this link for women from 18 years: https://pt.surveymonkey.com/s/prevcamama. The purpose of the questions is whether the women prevent breast cancer by making periodic examinations. The survey will continue to be applied until September and the results will be presented during the competition. About the experiments we have a special help: Keizo Asami’s Ghost! You may not know him. He gave a great help in negotiations between BRAZIL and Japan in order to build the LIKA. Sadly, he died before the great opening… Well, we believe that he haunts our experiments, in the best way possible of course. Occasionally we hear some weird noises, but we all know that it’s only Keizo wanting to have some fun. Every time that something like that happens, our results get excellent! So, thank you Keizo! |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
Paris Bettencourt
INTERVIEW OF A TEAM MEMBER |
Hi, everyone, this is Paris Bettencourt team. Our team members come from all over the world, from france to Spain, to the US. This year, as you may remember from the movie project and sweat pad collection, we are working on smell body, hoping to eliminate unpleasant body odor with synthetic biology! Today, we would like to introduce you a special team member of ours: Panthere Delasavane! She invites everyone to friend her on facebook! Panthere currently lives with team member Henry De Belly, and would soon move in with another member, Antonio Villarreal. She is an active participant of all team activities, from scientific ones to social ones. Today we interviewed her on her experience with the team. On being a family How do you like it that you are living with, working with and partying with iGEMers all the time? Grrrrr, it is really funny to say how Henry behaves during work and at home. He is really different. He tries to be as serious as possible at work, but plays crazily loud music and drinks a lot of beers at home. So does Antonio. In fact, they are in the same indie rock band together. Grrrrr, it is almost hard to believe they are synthetic biologists. I laugh whenever I hear them introducing themselves as biologists. It also seems to be the case with other members on the team. For the past two months, I feel like living in an iGEM bubble that is full of smelly compounds, with this project, and also people I like in one way or the other. It’s like a family and then you need to work hard to keep everyone together. You know, it seems I am always the parent of the team. On international dinner I heard you guys have international dinner every Thursday. How do you like it? Grrrrr, oh man, it is like my favorite part of the week. We have had Mexican night, French night, Indian night and American night so far. Someone cooks every week and it is awesome. This is one of the advantages of having such an international team. I enjoy listening to drunken conversations that are filled with national prides, but also cultural lessons. Learning so much about different countries now. On iGEM I know you have worked for other labs before. How is iGEM different? Grrrrrr, you know, as I said, iGEM makes me feel like a parent. It is really like being a PI, everyone on the team. You have to know the budget, build the team, interact with people with different specialties and come up with projects by yourself. I feel like a real scientist and inventor, not a panthere. I also like how it is not a super long project, so we get to see some results and hopefully feel good about ourselves. Most important question! Are you coming to Boston? Of course I am. I am the soul of the party and guardian of the team. * Panthere is a stuff animal of Henry’s. It does have a Facebook page that has been turned into a photo wall of iGEM activities. This all got started because Henry wanted to build a Tinder account for her, which is coming! Now, we regard it as team mascot and a storyteller of our iGEM experience. This interview of Panthere was translated by Henry De Belly. Friend Panthere Delasavane on Facebook! Follow Paris Bettencourt iGEM team! |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
Paris Saclay
OUR TEAM |
Our team first participated in iGEM in 2012. In 2013 we received a gold medal at the European Jamboree. We are made up of biologists, biochemists, mathematicians and computer scientists. We are mostly undergraduates. We work closely with IGM (Institut de Genetique et de Microbiologie), which conducts research in genetics and microbial genomics. |
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OUR PROJECT |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
Polytechnic University of Valencia
ABOUT OUR TEAM |
Our team started at the end of a lesson of the subject “Synthetic Biology”. Lucía and Jose realized they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the iGEM as students, so they basically started stalking the instructors to start with our project. Alba and Alfredo showed their interest just a few weeks after, so we all four biotechnologists became labmates. Finally, Jana (Alejandra) and Iván, our engineers, joined the team along with an army of new instructors and advisors (One of them, Yadira, is in this team photo too). Now, we are a team made of people from very different backgrounds working together to create our amazing Sexy Plant. We love what we are doing and we are going to rock this contest. After a team meeting in July the students went to have lunch together near the engineer’s headquarters at the end of our university campus. It was around 3 pm, close to 40 Celsius degrees outside and extremely humid atmosphere when we finished having lunch and we realized that we didn’t want to sweat to dead. The biotechnologist of the team had to go back to the laboratory, which is about 20 minutes walking away from the restaurant, too long for walking in the sun in that weather. So we made our way to the laboratory crossing all the buildings with air conditioning we could find in our way, and resting in them for some minutes so we could cool down a little bit. So we turned a 20 minutes walk into a 1 hour expedition through buildings we had never been in during all these years studying in our university. |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
StanfordBrownSpelman
ABOUT OUR TEAM |
The Stanford-Brown-Spelman team is entering it’s fourth year of participation in the iGEM competition. Partnered with the NASA Ames research center, the team focuses on issues related to astrobiology and aerial technologies. They enjoy spending their time soaking up the California sun, eating lots of good food, and of course, pipetting. Meet Jotthe. Although she may be the tiniest (or as she would say tinniest) member of our team, her many contributions and accomplishments would indicate otherwise. Jotthe enjoys baking, dancing, scheduling appointments to finally get her driver’s license, and of course, long walks on the beach. She also loves sharing pictures of her 15 month old nephew, discussing flag code, and drowning her quesadillas in hot sauce to mask the flavor of cheese. Although she despises the texture of cheese, Burrito Wednesday is quite possibly her favorite day to buy lunch in the cafeteria. As you can see, Jotthe is an intelligent, beautiful, and versatile bioengineer. With her unique interests and natural talent at baking cinnamon cakes, she’s quite the catch. - Poorwa Godbole, SBS iGEM 2014 |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
Sheffield
OUR TEAM |
Our team consists of 8 undergraduate students from the University of Sheffield. Sharan Nanuan - “Miniprep Queen”, a second year student of Biochemistry and Microbiology. Not great at laser quest. Alex Simpson - a second year Aerospace Engineer, in his own words “quite successful with middle aged women” (this may be taken out of context). Ben Madden - a third year Chemical Engineer with a thing for bioreactors. Mustafa Hussain – a second year Mechatronics and Robotics student with a thing for remote control helicopters. Jianxing Qin - a second year student in Automatic Control and Systems Engineering originally from China. Lara Grew – a second year geneticist, bit of a lad, skilled at aiming fluids into other guy’s eyes. Ben Lomax – stunningly attractive, massively intelligent, fantastically funny, and fairly modest first year molecular biologist. Erika “Ethika” Otaviano – a third year Bioengineer. When it comes to ethics and consent forms for policy and practices research, she just can’t get enough. |
On Friday 18th of July we held a meet-up for some of the other UK iGEM teams. Widely considered a success, the main aims of the meet-up was to find out about other teams projects, and potentially collaborate with our new iGEM friends. After a hectic morning of putting up sign posts and ensuring refreshments would arrive on time, other iGEM teams arrived from Oxford, Kent, York and UEA. We had talks from guest speakers Professor Phillip Wright about his perspective on synthetic biology as a chemical engineer, and Rob Meckin, who explored the sociology of the human practices aspect of synthetic biology. Each team then gave a two minute presentation on their project, and we all enjoyed a game of networking bingo – a great way to get to know each other. We ended the meet-up with a poster session and refreshments, and began to talk about collaborating with each other. After the meet-up we went out for post-meet-up drinks and a celebratory night on the town. Conversation began regarding what we should wear for our presentation in Boston. It was noted that many iGEM teams incorporate their own national dress into their outfits (such as the Tokyo Tech and TU-Munich 2013 teams). After an intense debate about what British national dress truly consisted of, one somewhat inebriated team member bought a bowler hat on eBay (at the insistence of a postgraduate supervisor) in a certain notorious Sheffield nightclub. It was most likely not worth the £20 spent on it. |
Newsletter n°3
from August 25th to September 7th
Technion Israel
OUR PROJECT |
When we came up with the idea for our project we imagined a home detection kit for toxins, allergens and other substances. So while we are doing PCR’s, run gels and document every step, we try not to forget what can be done with our work with some (a lot) more R&D, so we let our imagination sail and planed a home test, called “Safie”. If you’re allergic to peanuts, eggs or any other substance you know how important it is to be sure your dish doesn’t contain the allergen – what if you could be sure the dish is safe? Imagine you’re going out to celebrate your mom’s birthday. You’re the only vegetarian in the family so you are forced to go to a nonveg restaurant – how can you be sure there is no egg or meat in your dish? The answer is “Safie”! You test, wait 10 minutes and know what is safe for you! Let us know what you think of the name and the concept |
