IGEM:IMPERIAL/2009/Getting Started

iGEM 2009 - Imperial College London Team



Getting Started

Aim
To give the iGEM team clear goals and activities for the first week to help them to take the initiative to organise and structure their own time.

To do list
1.To create a timetable for the first week to try to organize the group to complete the activities below

2.Everyone register for the biobrick Registry and OWW and create/customise user pages

Activities
1. Journal Club
 * 1 paper/day, 20-25min presentation + Q&A, 2 students(Eng/Bio) presenting
 * Documentation of paper and discussion
 * Keep track of papers with your Cite-U-Like account

2. Tutorial on how to use OWW
 * 2 students (Bio/Eng), 30min presentation + 30min practical
 * Get everyone used to basics and key codes
 * Be useful to document the tutorial for future reference

3.Tutorial on Biobricks + Registry
 * 2 students (Bio/Eng), 30min presentation + 30min practical
 * Cover basics of navigating, documentation, creating part, creating composite parts, standards used in registry

4. Presentations

To give each other lectures in own expertise area to help create a common base of knowledge: Can be multiple students presenting, 30min presentations, everyone help to present one presentation,
 * 1) Key concepts of synthetic biology
 * 2) Central Dogma – replication, transcription, translation
 * 3) Key lab techniques – transformation, midi/mini preps, DNA agarose gel etc.
 * 4) Engineering approach – use industrial example to explain processes involved in engineering cycle and adapt an old iGEM project to fit with the engineering cycle.
 * 5) Modelling tools – I think be good to include this lecture ????

5. Brainstorming exercise: formalized brainstorming sessions to help in the begining:
 * Split in 2 groups, and choose one of those 2 projects:
 * "Reusing the existing EpsE biobrick (K143032), and trying to find new and novel applications".
 * "Capturing C02, and making something useful out of it".
 * Expected outcomes:
 * One mindmap showing the potential of the project in terms of synthetic biology, iGEM, commercial applications.
 * One mindmap showing the challenges/weaknesses of the project
 * A list of 5-10 publications stored in your Cite-U-Like account with a short summary and relevant tags.
 * A list of 5-10 web links stored in your Del.icio.us account with comments and relevant tags

Resources

 * 1) OWW main page - http://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page
 * 2) BioBricks Registry - http://partsregistry.org/Main_Page
 * 3) Reading List - http://openwetware.org/wiki/Imperial_College/Courses/Spring2008/Synthetic_Biology/Resources/Literature
 * 4) citeulike - http://www.citeulike.org/
 * 5) username = ask james
 * 6) password = ask james
 * 7) Del.icio.us account
 * 8) username : ask james
 * 9) password = ask james
 * 10) Freemind software for mindmaps
 * 11)  More Resources

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