Team:UESTC-China/yanTeam

Feb 14
iGEM 2014 registration opens.
Feb 20
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
Team of iGEM 2014 in UESTC is founded.
Feb 21
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
We name our team Green Life;
Discuss the direction we will focus on for the iGEM 2014.
Feb 24
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
We meet the supervisors Yong Zhang, Xuelian Zheng, Lixia Tang, discussing the direction and acquiring their opinions of our project.

March 3
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
We firstly choose plant as our receptor, each member of our team give advices for the details we plan to do, such as which plant to use, tobacco, Arabidopsis or any other plant?
March 10
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
We talk with our supervisors and decide to use tobacco as our receptor for its simpleness as model organism.
March 17
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
We discuss the project and firstly decide to create a plant which can absorb formaldehyde largely by synthetic biology. And we choose Yasong Cui as our team leader.
March 24
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
Team leader assign task for us;
The first phase for our task begins, searching references and designing our logo.
March 31
We registered our team with the name of Green Life;
iGEM 2014 registration closes;
Team registration fee due.

April 9
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
Group meeting for the references and information we have researched last few days. Team leader Yasong Cui and Jingyao Lireport the key enzymes through the formaldehyde metabolic pathways. HPS, PHI are critical enzymes of RuMP pathway in formaldehyde assimilation. The references show that the transformation method is chloroplast transformation. The crucial enzyme in amplifying stomas of foliage.
April 13
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
Group meeting for the reference reading.
Mingyuan Wang report one gene (AdCP) of pollen sterility;
Jiao He report FDH which can amplify metabolic pathway in plant;
Yasong Cui report gene AHA2 which can amplify stoma of foliage.
April 16
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
Group meeting for the wiki constructing;
The responsible person of wiki, Zhiqiang Yan assign task for the rest.
April 20
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
Jie Li report Faldh which can amplify metabolic pathway in plant;
Rui Liu report some information about HPS, PHI;
Yasong Cui report some information about AHA2.
April 23
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
Vector construction and confirmation of the gene (HPS, PHI, FDH, Faldh, AHA2, AdCP) being used in our project.
April 23
Site: online
We exchange the team name Green Life into UESTC-China.
April 30
Site: The seventh middle school in Chengdu.
We introduce the concept and racing type of iGEM to the students in the seventh middle school who were the best students in Sichuan province.
April 30
Site: West 304 of main building in UESTC
We talk about the PrbcS-3C promoter sequence and the gene sequence of transit peptide of chloroplast.

Communicate with SCU

During the summer vacation, we communicated with the students from SCU. We exchanged our project to each other and made a long talk about what we had done during the last month. What’s more, we let them visit our laboratory where we did our project. At the end of the communication, we gathered to have a lunch, which made us more harmonious.

Transformation

From July 25th,we start to do the transformation part. That really requires large volume of work. Four members of our team do the most of the work,and other members also help a lot. The genes are transformed into tobacco via Agrobacterium-mediated leaf disk transformation method,which means we begin with leafs and end with small plants.We do three-time repeated transformation to assure every vector can get enough positive plants. Obviously, DNA detection and RT-PCR method are used to prove the plants have already get the gene or genes.

Vector construction

On August 6th, after about three months' hard work,we finish the section of vector construction. According to the plan,we are going to construct 11 gene expression vectors,including 2 backbone vectors, 6 single gene expression vectors and 3 multi-gene expression vectors. The main reason why it takes so long is that the gene AHA2 we synthetize from the company can't stay stable in our competent cell. Several methods are tried, but they don' work. So we have to give the gene up.

Visited by the schoolmaster

During the summer vacation, besides communicating with the students in SCU, there is another activity which worth a notice, our principal came to our laboratory and gave us a speech, which totally stimulated us to work harder and excited. The principal told us do not be scared to have the new idea, ‘cause the study we received today is to make us to speak out a new idea no matter it is wizard or not.

Questionaire

In order to popular iGEM in our country and do some research about our project, we made a questionnaire. We disseminated the questionnaire in many different places to make different range of people to participate this research, however, the students is still the most part of the engaged people.
In the questionnaire, we got three part needing people to sign in. through these three parts’ questions, we can find the viewpoints people showed to iGEM and our project.

Formaldehyde detection

On September 1st, when the eighth leaves of the first batch of tobacco seedings appear,we start the formal experiments of formaldehyde detection. Before that,some pre-tests are made based on some corresponding references. Finding the right amount of formaldehyde is the hardest part. By means of a series of experiments,we determine the final protocol which includes the qualitative detection and quantitative detection. From the experimental results,we can draw the conclusion that our super plants have remarkable formaldehyde tolerance and can dramatically reduce the concentration of formaldehyde in the air.

Products display

In the beginning of this new semester, our school held a science and culture activity. We caught this opportunity to advertise iGEM and our ultimate products, the plants which can absorb formaldehyde. The leaders and many teachers in our school also participated this activity. We displayed the plants which already owned the several genes which worked in the absorption of formaldehyde, to the people who visited our project. And the people visited our plant all said they want to owe one if there is already market available.