Team:HK SSC/Notebook
Notebook
Timeline
January
Week 1
Recruitment of Team members.
Week 2-3
School was suspended therefore our team held daily discord meetings to research and discuss on possible topics for the project this year.
Week 4
After 2 weeks of research, we finally decided on the topic – biosynthesis of valerolactams. Everyone then searched for literature about different pathways for the biosynthesis of valerolactams.
February
Week 5-6
Our team shared the literatures found and came up with a brief design of the project.
Week 7-8
Our team further researched into the topic and finalized the design of the project.
March
Week 9-11
We designed the parts and came up with a cloning plan for each construct.
Week 12
We came up with a list of chemicals and equipment needed and starting ordering them as shipping takes more time under COVID-19.
April
Week 13-14
We researched and discussed on possible ways model the cyclization process of valerolactams.
Week 15
We decided on using the software Rosetta to simulate how the cyclization would work.
Week 16
Our human practice team started reaching out to algae companies and nylon manufactures for interviews and advice on our project. We also began designing our board game.
May
Week 17-18
We couldn’t gain access to the labs therefore we put more focus on our modelling works and explored other possible methods. We also held online synthetic biology workshops[=
Week 19
Due to the pandemic, we couldn’t be able to interview the companies, thus our plans were postponed. We put our focus on researching.
Week 20
The severity of the pandemic lowered and we regained access to the lab. We started working on the cultivation of our Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973 strain and on the cloning of pSPIN.
June
Week 21-23
We began cell preparation.
Week 24
We began searching for possible collaborations with teams of similar interests.
July
Week 25-26
We found teams for collaboration and visited Geb Impact Technology.
Week 27-28
We worked on the promotional video.
August
Week 29
We had a virtual meetup with team HKU and joined the HK Symposium.
Week 30
We interviewed HKRITA and discussed on the implementation of our project.
Week 31-32
We exchanged strains with team HKU and cultiavted their strain along with ours.
September
Week 33-35
We worked on plasmid prep of DavB-dava-ak-puc, panS, pSPIN, and the electroporation of S.elongatus UTEX 2973 with panS.
Week 36
We finalized our modelling results and took part in the Ethics Module held by team Instabul_Tech.
October
Week 37
We began working on our team’s wiki page.