Team:Auckland MOD/Notebook

<!DOCTYPE html> MOD - University of Auckland iGEM 2018 Team

Notebook

It's been a busy year! Take a look at the progress we've been making in our project: both in and outside of the lab.

Recruitment: We Want You!

As everyone comes back after the summer break, we begin recruiting new 2018 Team MOD members. The handover process from 2017 iGEM Team SECA means we're slowly building an iGEM alumni here at UoA. They've been really helpful mentoring us as we start our new project in terms of sharing research documentation, transferring financial accounts, and having a small team cheering for us from the sidelines.

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Identifying a National Problem

As a team we've all come together to discuss potential project ideas. Everyone has their own specific interests ranging from plant physiology to wine microbiology - it's great to see a diverse range of options. We've identified waterway pollution as a huge problem in New Zealand: each year we're seeing more incidences of toxic algal bloom formation in the summer and have begun searching potential ways to use synthetic biology to combat this issue.

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Refining our Biological Solution

After carrying out our own research, we've looked into the effects of dairy run-off entering the water system. Discussion with our PI and researchers within the university has helped narrow down the chosen metabolic pathway we might upregulate. We've chosen Arabidopsis thaliana as our model organism and plan on increasing the uptake and breakdown of excess urea in the soil, using the enzymes DUR3, UreG and GS1;2.

Lab induction time! We've all had to complete our safety training so we can jump into the PC1 facilities for our lab work.

Looking Beyond the Lab

If we're looking at a product for dairy farmers, it's important to start thinking about market validation. Rachel has begun speaking to social scientists in the university to get an idea of how to conduct a focus group, and how to engage with students as part of our community engagement efforts.

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Designing our gene constructs

We’re starting to design our GS1;2 construct to transform into Agrobacterium, with help of our PI and other researchers in SBS. We plan on using the Gateway reaction (usingg the attB sites) to introduce our gene constructs into our chosen destination vectors. This is what we’ll transform into Agrobacterium.

The UreG plasmid the plant lab ordered from another lab group arrived in the mail: we’ve prepped it, all we need to do know is figure out what to do with it! We want to test our Gateway protocol, but first we need to find out how to add the attB sites to our plasmid.

Starting our investor presentations!

Had our first investor presentation with BioMatters! They were really receptive towards our idea in terms of it being relevant to nitrogen pollution in New Zealand. Such a cool experience connecting with people in the industry who are equally passionate about GMOs and are keen to support us!

Had our investor pitch with Return On Science! It’s cool to see our lab students present the entrepreneurial aspects of our project for the first time. We got some good feedback on areas of commercialization we should deeper look into - particularly around IP and our business model.

Working through the BioBrick lab

We’ve successfully transformed our composite RFP BioBrick into E. coli and run colony PCR to confirm. We’ll be spending the rest of the week planning our purification technique (subcloning into another vector to add a HisTag) and fluorescent characterization under different salinities. We’ve found the transformed E. coli grow a bit slower than usual - we’ll be asking past teams that have worked with our BioBrick if they’ve encountered the same problems.

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Subtitle

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Title

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Subtitle

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Title

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Subtitle

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Title

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

Subtitle

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque iaculis nibh ut quam pellentesque eleifend. Quisque posuere dolor vitae quam tincidunt placerat. Suspendisse ex purus, ornare ut porta nec, interdum id diam. Morbi at mauris imperdiet, porttitor libero in, mattis magna. Pellentesque in mi tristique, congue ligula vitae, ultrices odio. Donec ac mauris nulla. Nam eu purus sed turpis congue placerat. Nunc ut lorem eu arcu auctor sollicitudin.

"Competing in iGEM required more strength, endurance, and sacrifice than any other project I have undertaken. But nothing could have prepared me more for the post graduate study I am now pursuing than formulating and completing our project as an independent scienctist."

Judith Glasson, Alumni

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