Melbourne/meeting 13 april 2007

From 2007.igem.org

Revision as of 10:45, 1 July 2007

<list of minutes> <Back to team home page> Author: Jan

1st Meeting Meeting

Date : 13/4/07

Present : Lei, Alisa, Katya, Phil, Jan.

Apologies: Prof. Cheng (Holiday), Patricia (Canberra)

PLEASE MODIFY accordingly, i'm sure there are some mistakes, :P

Agenda Points: TEAM MANAGEMENT - introduction of members - team registration (and deadlines) - funding - funding proposals - misc - weekly meeting times (& location)

PROJECT IDEAS - lei will give brief intro of previous teams projects and members discuss any other ideas. - develop timeline

SUMMARY

TEAM MANAGEMENT - - introduction

   Lei - the original driver of iGEM at unimelb. (Soft. Eng & Biochem), with background in elec eng as well. Currently doing Honours year in maths.
   Alisa - 3rd year - pure maths / microbiology ? ... research in cloning at St Vincents (UROP)
   Katya - 3rd year - biomed eng... research in microbiology/immunology
   Phil - completed elec.eng 20 years ago... currently doing undergrad, (focus on biochem)
   Jan - completed chem.eng/commerce (finance) undegrad last year... currently doing pgrad masters in biomed eng.... research on bone cell interaction modeling
   ACTION POINTS - suggest to put up small bios once the wiki is started

- team registration

   iGEM registration, needs to be completed by the end of April. proposal sent to MIT. 
   iGEM representative to visit in July/August
   ACTION POINTS - project description to be clarified next week. then proposal to be fleshed out from there.

- funding

   finances to be managed by project supervisor (professor ?) - do we need a liason... reimbursement schemes... elaborate down the track.
   funding has been secured from: biomed eng, bio 21, molec biol. amounts not disclosed
   no accounts yet started. 
   ACTION POINTS - clarify how much funding we need (have a target... ) as this determines the number of team members that we can have and therefore send to MIT at the end of     the year

- funding proposals

   biochem dept. needs a proposal, before signing off (effective due diligence) - aim to have this confirmed at the same time as team registration.
      they want to know about the team, who we are, what we want to achieve, and what the university and us will get out of the competiton.
   QANTAS - free flights, (Lei i think you said this was linked to some scheme that they were already running)
   other companies... GTech?, other contacts through personal network.
   Prof. David Tripe (immunology dept?)
   Paul Gooley?
   ACTION POINTS - contact prospective sources and clarify 

- misc

   roles to be clarified later - most likely horses for courses.
   google group started ... this will be ported to wiki once team registration is complete. (openwetware will host this)
   discussed the likely need for more team members, but this is limited by funding... 
   discussed need for team name, team logo, team shirts (each team member to have at least 2)
   this needs to be complete by July/August, due to iGEM representative visit. 
   presentation at unimelb Open Day in August (the above needs to be finished) - this is a good medium term deadline, for these admin task and preliminary posters and presentations.
   article in uninews
   ACTION POINTS - all to join google groups, lei to send out invitations.
   Jan to post minutes :)

- weekly meeting times

   friday afternoon seems the best time at this point, please post any objections.
   ACTION POINTS - lei to determine possible regular location.

PROJECT IDEAS. - ideas.

   bacterial liquid wars (a linux game) (comibination of alisa's and lei ideas)
   partly inspiring from texas biofilm...
   competition between two states with possible third state (absence of inputs)
   inputs are to be red and blue light (rhodopsin ...?)
   red light will promote red pigment/protein and degrade blue pigment...
   blue light will promote blue pigment/protein and degrade blue pigment...
   no stimulus will return to no pigments...
   lei has found papers on signalling pathways and blue light?
   ACTION POINTS - lei, alisa, katya to elaborate/collaborate on this and present preliminary proposal/poster at next meeting
   this idea needs to expand, so that it has backup if one aspect fails (ie. the threshold device (lo/hi bounds ... trigger alternate state)
   ALL papers to be posted on google groups ideally with comments.

   bioremediation of minerals (phil's idea among many)
   this has several components 
   bacteria absorbs/leeches out minerals ions from ore. once certain conc is reach a threshold device triggers the generation of air vesicles that cause the bacteria to float.     possible exocytosis of the minerals and/or gas vesicles will allow partial/total recycle loop to be setup. This idea has several components which obviously cannot all be     completed by November, so will have to focus on the most feasible one. 
   Phil has identified a paper, from 98, that has shown the feasibility of floating  bacteria, now just need to setup trigger and control system. [can we make them sink;) ]
   also lei mentioned that after talks with Drew Endy, is not too generate bacteria with novel function by just plugging in a sequence of genes, but rather to engineer some     novel control system
   ACTION POINTS - phil, jan to elaborate/collaborate on this and present preliminary proposal/poster at next meeting, ALL papers to be posted and commented on google  groups.
   
   phil's other idea
   bacterial PID control - feasibility uncertain at this point, but INSANELY cool idea.

please note the following feasibility criteria when evaluating proposals. - what awards will the proposal be targeted to winning. - how long will the lab work take. (how many cloning, screening, amplification, exercises?) - do we have the sequence, can we get the sequence in time. - what biobricks will we need. -

GENERAL ACTION POINTS

- all to read introductory paper on synbio posted by lei.
- email and other contact details to be exchanged (lei can you start a page on the group with everyone's email)
- contact personal network for technical support (possible supervisory roles) and funding
- exit strategies if one of the components fails.
-