The Fifth International InterLaboratory Measurement Study is one of the largest collaborative studies ever performed in synthetic biology, featuring the work of iGEM teams across the world. Each annual iteration of the study is dedicated to identifying and rectifying sources of variability in measurements and protocols across lab settings. This year’s edition primarily focused on standardizing absorbance and fluorescence measurements of GFP-expressing bacteria, correcting for human and machine variability across labs.

Per the iGEM protocol, we transformed New England Biosciences 5-alpha E. coli with the eight following plasmids from the iGEM Distribution Kit 7:

Positive Control: BBa_I20270
Negative Control: BBa_R0040
Test Device 1: BBa_J364000
Test Device 2: BBa_J364001
Test Device 3: BBa_J364002
Test Device 4: BBa_J364007
Test Device 5: BBa_J364008
Test Device 6: BBa_J364009

Bacterial colonies were grown either in liquid cultures or plated with Luria Bertani (LB) broth and chloramphenicol; Each plasmid backbone confers bacterial resistance to chloramphenicol (pSB1C3 backbone).

Team:Stanford-Brown-RISD/InterLab

Background