IGEM:Brown/2007/Lead-sensor/2007-7-20

Week of July 18th :: Lead Sensor

1. To start of the week, we prepared our July Update presentation for faculty and staff. Things went great, we now have a solid presentation of the lead project, as well as our progress so far.

2. Deepa successfully PCR'ed out the lead parts using our new set of primers. The next step is to digest and make Biobricks. After that we'll start our own experiments and send the parts to the Registry.

3. We've got serious problems with the amplifier. We haven't been able to transform it, either chemically or by electrophoresis. As well, MIT sent us some cells which were supposed to contain the part, but didn't.

According to Harvard's presentations (on their wiki) they were also unable to transform the amplifier (verified via Colony PCR). The mystery thickens.

Tito is writing Imperial to see if they could send us some functional cells, since they were able to test the amplifier last year.

4. As a backup to the amplifier, Jeff is ligating together sub-parts

5. The arsenic->GFP detector was also created, Jeff ligated together the parts late last week. A gel revealed that the ligation seems to have worked, but the device does not seem functional.