Team:Macquarie Australia/Notebookdry

Dry lab notebook

This week was an introduction to iGEM and our bootcamp month began. The team met one another and skill sets were determined.
Fundamental molecular biology knowledge was taught about the differences between synthetic biology and genetic engineering.
The team had a look through past Macquarie University teams' wiki pages to get a better understanding of the competition.
Prof. Robert Willows explained the chlorophyll biosynthesis pathway and sent articles for us to read over.
The main ideas and aims of the project were discussed as well as molecular knowledge, fundraising ideas and outreach opportunities. Our primary aim was to work on the addition of the chlorophyll biosynthesis pathway into E.coli with the potential to incorporate photosystem II. Research was done on these areas.

Two additional team members, Amanda and Ken joined the team.
Email address, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts were created for us to form connections with researchers and other iGEM teams.
Mike Gibbs taught codon optimisation techniques.
Prof. Robert Willows gave us more articles to read through and several students conducted their own research.
A primer was designed for our project.

A rough plan was created for the parts list with its current progress.
Made a plan for when people were available over the semester.
Work on the wiki began: A basic website design was created; code for interactive menu bar was created.
Zoe and Josip worked with Prof. Robert Willows on mathematical modelling.
Preliminary research was conducted on pathway enzymes and substrates.
A cryptic crossword was completed as a group for team-building and to de-stress.

The name ‘ChIVes- Chlorophyll induced vesicles’ was designed and chosen for our team.
Interlab data was submitted to the committee.
Twitter was redone and Facebook continually got more likes. We also kept uploading to social media platforms.
The team created several polls to determine when people were available to meet up throughout the semester.
Safety form was submitted.
The project description was created and submitted on time.
The team skyped with iGEM Tec de Monterrey from Mexico.

Started work on the wiki page. A logo was created and other graphical developments were established.

This week, our focus was on dry lab. We arranged ourselves into dry lab and wet lab groups.
The fundraising team began to work on the sponsorship document which would give sponsors an overview of our project and sponsorship levels that they could achieve depending on their contribution.
Facebook likes continued to grow and we got more followers on instagram.
During our weekly meeting, Prof. Robert Willows came up with an idea about Human practices which involved the process of customer discovery.

Irene and Renee presented at Macquarie University’s Open Day as part of the human outreach activity and spoke about iGEM and synthetic biology to potential medical science and biology students.
A new logo was created for our team.
The human practices team spoke to Dr. Paul Jaschke about the process of customer discovery and how we could potentially use it for our interviews regarding human practices, which inspired our idea to create a customer discovery tool kit. He also arranged a meeting for us with Lynne Teo, whom he had previously worked with.

This week, we chose our track: New Applications.
As part of our human outreach activities, we spoke at the UNSW symposium. We had the opportunity to formulate and explain our project to a large group of people and to speak with other iGEM teams about our journeys.
Our first meeting for human practices occurred. We met with Dr. Andrew Care to talk about his work. We also emailed several academics regarding potential interviews.
This week, a few members met with Dr. Andrew Gilbert, the general manager of Bioplatforms Australia, to discuss sponsorship opportunities. We provided him with the sponsorship document we created and introduced him to our project.

Meeting with Monica Espinosa Gomez to discuss her work with yeast using synthetic biology and metabolic engineering.
Angus and Renee met up with Dr. Alfonso Garcia-Bennett. They interviewed him on his work concerning synthesising and applying mesoporous materials for drug delivery.
The Go fund me account was created for the team to raise money from friends and family.
Skype call was arranged between NTU (Nanyang Technological University) and Macquarie for a potential collaboration.
Our human practices team created a survey and sent a link out to other iGEM teams to gather information about how they were proceeding with the human practices aspect of the competition.
Interviewed Dr. Briardo Llorente. This gave us a starter point for customer discovery as he gave us some uses for vesicles.
We had an interview with Dr. Tom Williams about his work on the yeast 2.0 project, and and work on proteasomes. He suggested potential uses and impacts of our vesicles.
Associate Professor Anwar Sunna gave us a list of academics to email.
Interviewed Dr. Hugh Goold, who provided us with some of his insight on synbio.

Granted sponsorship from Andrew Gilbert from Bioplatforms and Labcyte.
A meeting with Lynne Teo regarding her work using and teaching customer discovery. She explained the entire process from start to finish and how to analyse our data once we had completed the interviews.
Interview with Prof. Nico Bruns regarding his work with protein cages containing nucleotide-binding polymers for drug delivery.
Interviewed Dr. Lucinda McRobb. She gave us some contacts in the medical and protein fields.
Dr. Joanne Tan was not available for an interview but sent her a document to complete. Helped us find potential uses for our project.
Created a results table for interviews.
Set up checklist to keep track of who we had contacted for the survey and who had filled it out.
Work on our wiki began with Karl creating several graphics for the website.
Budget document was completed and could easily be altered to better represent current prices and exchange rates. Safety form was completed and submitted.

Irene, Nick and Renee took part in an online virtual conference ran by the iGEM Abu Dhabi team. 6 different iGEM teams met up and quickly spoke about their project for 5 minutes or so and asked questions to help other teams with their progress.
The abstract for our project was created.
Interviewed Dr Lisa Goldsmith who provided a key insight into protein purification techniques and issues that could arise. Additionally, she provided the team with feedback on our project and the potential impact of our project.
Interviewed Mr Anthony Gurlica who, whilst not being an academic, provided us with a different perspective of research, mostly in industries. A chemist by formation, he explained how marvelled he felt at the idea of synthetic biology and how his struggles with spending hours in the lab to synthesise a product could be solved in a more efficient process by engineered E. coli.

This week, the Boston team was chosen. 6 team members applied and they did a little pitch, talking about the work they had completed for iGEM and why they deserved to go to Boston. We had enough funding to send everyone who wanted to go to Boston.
Ken and Renee had an interview over Skype with Dr. Brendan Orner who spoke about his previous work using protein cages that self assemble. He explained some of the issues working with vesicles and provided us with additional academics to interview.
Meeting with Robyn Lindner (Irene & Angus & Hamish) Talked more on the problems of protein work with Robyn’s previous protein work, and discussed applications our ChIVes could have in the industry.
Interview with Shabarni Gupta who explained her work with proteins in her PhD and gave us some suggestions for our project.
Interlab write up began.
Lots of work on the wiki was completed. The design was re-done with a focus on making it professional and easy to read.

Hamish, Renee and Nick had a meeting with Malvin Eutick, the CEO of Phebra pharmaceuticals. He told us about his company and some issues he has in relation to upscaling drugs for industrial use. He also gave us an insight into some new methods that can be used for our vesicles.
Interviewed Dr. Suzanne Mithieux at the University of Sydney. Talked more on Suzanne’s work on elastin, and how our product may help in purification and isolation especially enzymes, however no further contacts were given.
Interviewed Assoc. Prof. Sierin Lim meeting via Skype. She spoke about her work on protein cages and their applications.
The schedule for the presentations in Boston came out. We learnt that the Macquarie University iGEM team will be presenting in the first time slot on Thursday in room 207 at 9am.
Group going to Boston went to meet with the university to book flights and accommodation. Organised of our wet lab collaboration with Singapore.
In terms of the wiki the footer was created, the background colour was figured out and a new header was made. T-shirts ordered.
Team building time at Strike

Angus and Ken had a meeting with Dr. Jenny Vo in which they learnt about Dr. Vo’s experience in the biologics industry and her experience in drug discovery.
Interviewed Prof. Jan C. M. van Hest who was able to provide us with insight into his research on smart compartments that self-assemble.
Team page and human outreach page was up on the wiki and functional.
Write up of the safety component, customer discover toolkit, attributions, journals and interlab of the wiki began.

Continuous work on our wiki.
T-shirts arrived.
Judging form completed.

Our wiki page was completed