Wetlab/diary

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Revision as of 11:34, 19 July 2007 by MaijaP (Talk | contribs)

Contents

Week 1

02/07

Our lovely University tower
Very exciting! Today we moved into our new lab in the recently rebuilt Bower Building under the university tower. Maija is thrilled about having her very own brand new high spec top of the range pipettes (bog standard really). Managed to apprehend a spare fridge (Team Building Exercise Number 1) and discovered that Mai-Britt is just as strong as the boys. The day was mainly organized around tutorials and seminars where we planned several phases of the project. We were also introduced to the Bower Common Room and Christine's sandwich was good.

03/07

Graduation Day! Mai-Britt, Scott (looking great in his kilt) and Peter all graduated on a lovely Scottish summer's day (rained cats and dogs – all day!). In the lab we plated gels and prepared antibiotic stocks. Also registered with iGEM. Christine's sandwich was frozen in the middle and did not defrost too well.

04/07

More gels plated and rummaged for plasmids in the deep freeze. The dry lab part of the team did an excellent job of extracting DNA with miniprep kits and ran the gels for them by themselves. Rachael said she appreciates the patience the wet lab people must have to do this kind of thing. We'd have her back anytime. Began to find our way around the iGEM 2007 wiki hunting for useful biobricks. Sandwich was the most disappointing so far. Soggy in the middle.

05/07

Scott was the first one to figure out to find biobricks in the DNA Parts Kit. He and Maija transformed some biobricks which we may find useful into competent E. coli. Peter has gone to Russia “for research purposes” but we all say “Hi” to his family. Christine and Mai-Britt researched restriction enzymes for the plasmids we plated and miniprepped. Gave the sandwich less time to defrost. Progress.

Scott, Christine and Maia in the lab on the first day. Exciting!

06/07

Best sandwich of the week! Anyway, made some snazzy media (we're trying to make this sound good) and pretty stocks for making media. Maija and Christine did a power workshop (sounding good yet?) with Emma and learned how to use BioEdit and Primer3 to design some sexy primers. We're well chuffed. Is it sad that we find this sort of thing really cool? Scott and Mai-Britt have gone to T in the Park music festival. Christine couldn't get tickets. She hopes it rains. Not really. Have fun!

Week 2

09/07

T in the Park was a great success and they didn’t get too soaked. We found out that Peter will not be able to return from Russia. Now we are a man down and need a replacement – fast. This week Christine will be attempting to overcome the sogginess of her sandwiches last week by replacing lettuce with sweetcorn. So far so good.

10/07

Enter superhero Lynsey. A friend of Mai and Scott, she’s very welcome, especially as she was able to help us with our presentations (Team Building Exercise Number 2). The drylab needed to know what we mean by ribosomes and primers (and why they take so long to design), and we needed to know what they expect from us (as well as what on earth MatLab is) – and now we know. It was awesome. Christine’s sandwich was quality.
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11/07

DmpR petti meidät, hiton lehmä!=##&%>!! Yes, we’re not fans of DmpR anymore. After spending too long designing primers for DmpR it hasn’t even grown properly and now we need to start all over again. We’ll double our bets this time and use DntR and XylR, and…….. design more primers!!!!!

12/07

“Get Christine Telephone, Goat Telephone Andrew, Andrew Telephone Christine”. Primers are making us crazy. On top of that, Christine forgot her sandwich. To the pub…
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13/07

Friday the 13th no less. So we ordered the primers (great) only to realise that one of the suffices was wrong. Too late. And we’re dealing with Germany here, and wow! they’re efficient! We didn’t fix it in the 15 minutes they allow after the order has been placed to change it because it took us that long redesign it and to realise we couldn’t call their office because they’re two hours ahead. We won’t be messing that up again.

14/07

Maija feels she needs to share this with the team. She woke up in the middle of the fri-sat night to the phone ringing and she thought she was designing primers and the display seemed to be full of Andrews, Goats, Christines and Telephones. Is she taking iGEM too seriously? LOL :D

Scott.w.ramsay 06:17, 12 July 2007 (EDT) MaijaP 11:27, 6 July 2007 (EDT) Christinemerrick 11:30, 6 July 2007 (EDT)