Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Notebook

Administrative Work Laboratory Work Human Practice
April 2016 Settled of lab duties and poitions
Lab safety Training
Started to have regular meetings every week
N/A N/A
May 2016 Recruitment of projects and prepare preliminary data for selection. Project related to pancreatic cancer diagnosis by Toehold Switch is selected
June 2016
July 2016
August 2016 Cloning of switches and its corresponding triggers into backbones with significant “ON/OFF”ratio in vivo.

Modified the switch by using new chromoprotein (amajLime and amilCP) by traditional cloning method to produce intuitive readout.
Attended The 4th iGEM Asia-Pacific iGEM Conference
September 2016 Identified problems in designing Toehold Switch manually and outline programme functions for semi-automatic toehold switch design. Held exhibition and questionnaire related with synthetic biology in CUHK information day and reached secondary school students in Hong Kong.
October 2016 Reviewing the impact and necessity of technology in nowadays society, we decided to use Toehold Switch to subtype Influenza A. Request for sponsorship.
November 2016 Brainstormed and did literature reviewing on how to maximize the“ON/OFF” ratio of Toehold switch. Constructed programs which embedded with Influenza A sequence database and Vienna RNA package.

Failed to test in cell free system due to insufficient materials and resources.

T7-RNA-polymerase amplification system is cloning to yield higher “ON/OFF”ratio.
December 2016 Requested for sponsorship.

Skype with the Pakistan iGEM team to explore the potential of collaboration.
January 2017
February 2017 Organised day camp, “One Day Biochemist”, for secondary school students to try out working in standard laboratory.
March 2017 Completed individual registration for iGEM 2018 Successful cloning of standard backbone, which allows standardized toehold switch cloning with less false positive results. Unsuccessful cloning of T7-rna-polymerase amplification system. Meeting with Joseph Sung, who is a medical expert and Vice Chancellor of CUHK.
April 2017 Designed the product construction of Toehold Switch and outlined the prototype (user manual).
May 2017 Reviewed the updated metal requirement and revised the division of work Continued cloning Toehold switch for Influenza A subtyping. Characterization on ability of fluorescent proteins by cloning amajLime and mRFP to pSB1A2 and pSB1C3 with constitutive promoter J23100 under different pH environment.
June 2017
July 2017 Cloned of influenza switch and trigger into our standard backbone
Validated switch by co-transformation
Clond switch into shipping backbone
August 2017
September 2017 . Mentored UCCKE high school team by providing advice on their project, troubleshooting routine lab problems and also helped them to analysis data. Hardware prototype design
October 2017 Sub-cloned the switches and trigger to standard backbones Draft the hardware model and kit for Dr. Switch.