Team:KULeuven/10 June 2008

present
SDK, KM, AC, JR, LVO, IT

Teachers workshop
(Inge) Tom Knight, Randy Rettberg and Meagan Lizarazo organised the Europe teachers workshop. I'll summarize the most important things.

On the project:

 * Try to divide the project into subparts in such a way that the whole project does not fail if one subpart fails / aim for intermediate goals and aim further if remaining time allows
 * iGEM is about doing synthetic biology based on standard parts, not about freestyle synthetic biology, however great that can be
 * They encourage to use existing BioBricks and improve their characterization and work further on previous projects - provide proper acknowledgement! ("Can someone completely own an idea?")

On sponsors:

 * Matlab will sponsor!
 * DNA synthesis by GeneArt (0.25/bp + 35 sample transport) - takes 4-6 weeks!

BioBrick practicalities:

 * protocols can be found on openwetware (will be included in the iGEM website soon)
 * plasmids in the Registry can be found by looking for ccdB (P1010) - available in a variety of plasmids
 * document your parts! take your time for this, documentation is extremely important (cfr. judging page).
 * The organisation has put a lot of work in quality checking the BioBricks spring 2008 distrubution, BUT, there still can be mistakes, so always check whether the BioBrick is indeed the one you were looking for!
 * Measurement is important - we received Jason's measurement kit by mail!
 * Meagan gave a tutorial on how to input a part in the registry
 * every team has a sandbox and a favorite parts section: the judges will only look at the parts in the favorite parts section!
 * each sent in BioBrick should be provided in a standard BioBrick plasmid
 * there are no rules on modeling (yet)

General:

 * what's the overall goal? impress iGEM ;)
 * Over lunch, each instructor had to present his/her team short report.
 * As part of the competition, we have to answer the questions on the safety page.
 * We're supposed to have fun :) If we don't, we can call them and they'll tell us a joke

Project Brainstorm
The ideas that came up are on the brainstorm page.