Guelph/23 June 2008

Dear Team,

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The following are laboratory times dedicated to iGem Research and Development [R&D] -- these are slated to repeat every week:

Team RNAi at Dave's Lab in Crop Science: Thursday Mornings

Team Synthetic Operon at Tim's Lab in OVC: Tuesdays 1:30pm Thursdays 2:30pm

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Upcoming meetings:

We may have an educational meeting in regards to Tim's and Lisa's plasmid design on Thursday, but this is unlikely as focus has shifted to R&D.

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These are the minutes for the Monday Noon Meeting on 2008 June 23rd.

Lisa informs us that she'll be working on Team Synthetic Operon's [SynthOp] projects-- on a regular basis on Tuesdays and Thursdays and invites anyone who wants to help to come by at the above listed times, Dave will also dedicate lab time on Team RNAi's project in his lab on Thursday mornings. Team SynthOp's Lisa has bioinformatically isolated the the carotenoid synthesizing enzyme genes from the plasmids we received. The next step is being completed by Brendan who is designing primers to clone each enzyme gene on its own. Tim is going to offer scaffolding and laboratory technique and protocol support for SynthOp's undergrads in his laboratory.

The present two projects and their goals have evolved a bit too. Brendan has decided that the amino acid project should be shelved for the moment since we're running into some technical issues with the beta-carotene project. SynthOp's primary concern will be the formation of a broad-host range plasmid with the beta-carotene genes. Brendan has begun to look for other genes which would assist in the vitamin A's synthesis. Dave is investigating other enhancements such as membrane folding genes to lock up the produced beta-carotene and other relevant RNA structures such as ribosome binding sites.