<p>This year we worked closely with the Vanderbilt iGEM team and the Rockridge High School iGEM team. </p>
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<p>This year we worked closely with the <a href="/Team:Vanderbilt">Vanderbilt iGEM team</a> and the <a href="/Team:UMaryland">University of Maryland College Park iGEM team</a>. </p>
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<p>The Vanderbilt team has asked us to take some fluorescence readings and help them fine tune and prepare for the policy and practices portion of the iGEM competition. To help us, they have offered to cater their kill switch project to make it suitable for our BioBrick. In time, we could add their time dependent kill switch as a backup to our concentration dependent kill switch, SacB (BBa_322921).</p>
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<p>The Vanderbilt team asked us to help them with their Policy and Practices section. Their project concerning ways to minimize random mutation "hot spots" in DNA raised some important questions about the integrity of DNA and a limitation "ceiling" for any such device that helps counter evolution. In return, they offered to cater their kill switch project to make it suitable for our BioBrick. For further steps, we could add their time dependent kill switch as a backup to our concentration dependent kill switch, <em>SacB (BBa_322921)</em>, in the event that our negative-selection system does not work as well as planned.</p>
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<p>The Rockridge team is brand new and therefore lacked the funding and support other teams enjoy. We kept in communication with them and did our best to answer the sort of questions that past team members might have been able to help them with. We also supplied them with some BL21 competent cells.
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<p>We also attended the iGEM meetup hosted by the University of Maryland College Park. We had a a fun day discussing our projects with the other teams in attendance and also enjoyed listening to talks by the guest speakers. The meetup was a good way to collaborate with other University teams as well as with researchers and government officials already in the field of synthetic biology.
The Vanderbilt team asked us to help them with their Policy and Practices section. Their project concerning ways to minimize random mutation "hot spots" in DNA raised some important questions about the integrity of DNA and a limitation "ceiling" for any such device that helps counter evolution. In return, they offered to cater their kill switch project to make it suitable for our BioBrick. For further steps, we could add their time dependent kill switch as a backup to our concentration dependent kill switch, SacB (BBa_322921), in the event that our negative-selection system does not work as well as planned.
We also attended the iGEM meetup hosted by the University of Maryland College Park. We had a a fun day discussing our projects with the other teams in attendance and also enjoyed listening to talks by the guest speakers. The meetup was a good way to collaborate with other University teams as well as with researchers and government officials already in the field of synthetic biology.
