Difference between revisions of "Team:Toulouse/Notebook"

First team meeting, our instructors informed us on the competition and how the team is organized. Our first mission is to prepare a presentation for the next week on the following themes:

Those presentations gave us the opportunity to understand more of the iGEM competition and to get to know each other (since we don’t all come from the same institutions)

Every groups of two or three students presented one of the subjects seen above. Every presentation was followed by a Q&A so that everyone understood clearly the competition.

The following weeks were spent brainstorming. Everyone presented at least two projects ideas. Here are a few examples of the project that were reviewed:

Two projects were still in course to be chosen, the use of ice nucleating proteins to purify water and the creation of a bio trap against the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. This last one was chosen to be our project on the grounds that it was the most feasible. The trap would produce butyrate to attract the parasite and formate to kill it.

We held our first meeting without instructors to discuss the design of the constructions needed to create our bacteria. Our reflexion led us to the conclusion that our construction would depend on the bees lifecycle. We therefore started searching for beekeepers that would agree to meet us.

We met with Dr Boucher Christian HDR, DR1 INRA retired since 2012 and amateur beekeeper. The fact that Dr Boucher was both a researcher and a beekeeper made this meeting really beneficial for us. We learned every important stages in a bees life and how the varroa affected it. We also learned more about the beekeeping activity and the treatments used to fight against the parasite. Furthermore we could discuss our early genetic design and how to improve it.

In conclusion of this meeting we decided that our bacteria shouldn’t produce both attractive and toxic molecules at the same time, this production should be cyclic to have the least effect on bee’s lifecycle since format is also toxic at a lesser extent for bees.

During the whole week we searched for means to produce our molecules cyclically. We found a way to produce our molecules on a circadian rhythm which allows us to produce toxic molecules during the night when bees are a lot less active.
Since we agreed on the regulation constructions we started to look for means to build our construction.
We also started to think about our logo and decided that Louise Gody was the most apt to create our logo since she is capable of drawing using a graphical tablet.
We also started to organize our search for financial help. To do so we designed a booklet explaining our project and what iGEM is.

We started searching for each individual genes by first looking on the iGEM registry.
Know that the design of our construct was agreed upon we also starded thinking about what ou device would look like. Since our bacteria needed to perceive red light we decided to place our device at the entry of the hive where bees need to passe to enter the beehive.

We realised that the number of genes that we needed to obtain and the cloning work that followed was too big. We therefore decided to synthesise the sequence needed to realise our construction.