May

Project Design

The month of May was largely focused on the selection and design of our Biobrick parts and devices. Two weeks were dedicated to the selection process for our team's 2014 iGEM project. Each acting team member identified a problem and proposed a solution via a genetically engineered organism; through discussion and popular vote, it was eventually determined that our team would work to express functional sMMO in E.coli for the purpose of methane remediation.

At this time, the team also voted to continue characterization and expansion of the RBS insertion primers first designed by Georgia Tech's 2013 iGEM Team.

May saw very little bench work besides training modules to develop wet lab skills and build our supply of biological resources.

June

RBS and Promoter Primer Testing

Starting in June the team began testing of newly designed RBS insertion primers as well as newly designed promoter insertion primers based upon the same concept. Initial tests with these primers ultimately failed. It was deemed that the protocols and techniques developed by the team were not adequate enough for job. However, by the end of the month the team had achieved successes in inserting both a high and a low efficiency RBS site in front of the mCherry reporter gene in pSB1C3.

sMMO Project Planning

No bench work was performed on the sMMO project in the month of June, instead the time was spent meticulously designing our selected sMMO genes for DNA synthesis in order to ensure optimized expression in E. coli and an easy to manipulate gene in the lab. Additionally, the high cost of synthetic DNA drove our team to spend a great deal of time fundraising and obtaining discounts from molecular biology product suppliers.

July

August

September

October