Team:Toulouse/Notebook
Notebook
Februrary
02/02/2015
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:
- Previous subjects. What are the themes explored by iGEM? Give examples of good projects and explain why they won?
- Biobricks? What are they? What’s their advantages? What are the materials send by iGEM? How does the registry work?
- Competition and deadlines. How does the competition works and what are the important deadlines?
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)
Our first team meeting
09/02/2015
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.
16/02/2015
The next step was to present every week 2 new Project ideas. The presentations were divided in the following parts.
- Context
- Goal
- Originality
- Strategy
- Difficulty
- Modeling
- Device
- Benefit
- Ethic
- Planning
- Why is this project going to win?
From february to may
The following weeks were spent brainstorming. Everyone presented at least two projects ideas. Here are a few examples of the project that were reviewed:
- Creation of a rapid detection kit for hepatitis
- Degradation of Lignin
- Use of ice nucleation proteins for water desalination
- Creation of a small domestic pollution detector
- ...
May
05/05/2015
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.
13/05/2015
Two members of our team participated in the Toulouse exposcience. They presented a poster on synthetic biology and the iGEM Competition. They also organized banana DNA extraction experience for children. This event was a good occasion for us to start learning how to design a poster.
15/05/2015
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.
18/05/2015
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.
25/05/2015
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.
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