Team:BCCS-Bristol/Calendar-Main/25 June 2008



Meeting: Project Presentation With Team Advisors
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm

Location: Room 1.59 Queen's Building

Agenda

 * Finish team roster
 * Introduce the advisors the to the team
 * Present the final 3 project ideas
 * Decide on the one to take further

Summary

 * 1) The final team roster needs to be in soon so everyone must ensure they are signed up on iGEM website.
 * 2) Project Presentations:
 * 3) * Radio Receiver (RF) ([[Media:BCCS-Radio_Frequency_Receiver_02.pdf|Slides]]) - Generating the response curve from the FRET recordings will be impossible due to having necessary Ca++ values for each cell. Instead a possible alternate is to find the average results of the FRET experiment for a population of bacteria and show that the average response is statistically different. This would lead to a proof of concept but no application in the time available. Also, equipment needs to be found to run tests.
 * 4) * Random Number Generator ([[Media:BCCS-Random_Output_01.pdf|Slides]]) - Although the possible design may work in theory there are concerns that the robustness of the output would hinder any possible applications. There were thought of using larger populations to give random outputs but this would require further thought.
 * 5) * Co-operative Movement ([[Media:BCCS-Co-operative_Movement_02.pdf|Slides]]) - Some further parts have been found for various aspects of the project and there are now three possible routes in terms of effort that we could take forward, e.g. everything, a simpler model using thermotaxis, or chemotaxis without recruitment. Several interesting ideas came up regarding the particles that could be used, including an interesting possibility of coating half the particles in a substance that will then forcefully bind with a protein that can be expressed on the cell membrane. Further checks do need to be carried out to ensure that there is little overlap with previous projects.
 * 6) In choosing the final projects it was decided that the RF project would work well as a side project but was too risky to take on alone. The random output project was more promising and a good design had been produced, but there was some speculation over how robust the output would be. Finally, the co-operative movement was seen to have the most promise with many ways to apply the final product (bacteria football!). It was, however, the most substantial and could easily be broken into 3 sub-projects. The final decision was to take the co-operative movement project on full time and for Oli to speak with Dek and running some RF tests in the background.

Actions

 * (Everyone) Send e-mail to Mario letting him know if you can make the Jamboree (Nov 8th-9th).
 * (Everyone) Search for previous iGEM project to ensure that the chemotaxis project has not been covered previously.
 * (Everyone) Do a general literature search for other possible chemotaxis type papers that may have covered some of the issues we have outstanding.
 * (Dek W) Send through a list of the papers and ideas that he raised.
 * (Sophie W, Jenn) Sign up on the iGEM website.
 * (Tom G) Produce breakdown of the outstanding tasks for the chemotaxis project.
 * (Claire, Mario, Oli, Tom G) Go through outstanding tasks and setup sub-teams to work on each.