[Lhs-biohacking] Stuff that's happened.... (igem, new lab stuff, workshops, and projects looking for contributors)

[Tom Hodder]

Stuff that's happened....

igem 2015

Our igem team headed over to Boston for the culmination of the 2015 igem competition at the "Giant Jamboree". For our final submission, the London Biohackspace team submitted 5 Biobricks to the registry (http://2015.igem.org/Team:London_Biohackspace/Parts) and presented the DIY-Brewkit project to the judges (http://2015.igem.org/Team:London_Biohackspace/Design). It turns out however that the igem judges lacked the vision to see the full genius of the project and our team were awarded a Bronze medal. There is no doubt that we achieved all the primary goals of participating in igem this year.

I'd like to say thanks to the members of the team who crammed a lot of work into the last few weeks in order to be able to present the project in Boston, and particularly to Ilya, Edo, Lena, Victoria and Tyche who went over to Boston to represent the London Biohackers.

Summarizing at the 2015 igem project in terms of benefits to the biohackspace, the outcome represents a serious levelling up of technical capability. Things we have done/can do now, which we didn't/couldn't before include;

1) A SureVector cloning kit to assemble vectors
2) Working with a variety of Yeast strains
3) Designing DNA to be assembled by synthesis services such as by IDT and Genscript
4) Assembling and submitting biobricks

We have learned a lot about organizing a technical project of this type, and we are planning to document and consolidate these skills and resources so they will be available for future projects. We are planning a igem 2015 debrief meetup to reflect on the successes/failures Sunday 11/October in the Classroom.

The full team for the igem project was as follows

TYCHE SIEBERS
LENA ASAI
EDOARDO GIANNI
ILYA LEVANTIS
SAM THOMSON
ALEC BURSLEM
TOM HODDER
ADAM DENYER
VICTORIA BUTLER
MICHAEL SMITH
JAMES PHILLIPS

Other stuff that has happened....

Prestige Classic Autoclave

We now have an autoclave suitable for sterilizing 1L and 2L Duran flasks containing media. (they don't fit upright in the Melag). This obviously makes it significantly easier to prepare larger volumes.


​

If you have used this type of autoclave before, it's fairly straightforward, and the operating instructions will be in the folder on the shelf. If you have not used this type of autoclave before, please give me a shout and I'll do a demo.


Sterile Spreaders and Inoculating loops

We've now got boxes of sterile spreaders and loops on the shelves.




If it looks like we are about to run out of anything important, please mention it on the slack main channel....

Sunday afternoon workshops

The Sunday afternoon meeting timeslot was pretty popular and so also were the igem bootcamp workshops held at UCL and in the hackspace classroom. So combining those 2 things, we are planning to try and keep the classroom booked for that time and run a series of events and workshops then. 

I am planning to schedule a series of workshops on building basic electronic controllers for bio-hack hardware and Edo has a plan to screen/workshop the bioacademany material at that time; http://bio.academany.org/doc/classes

Projects looking for contributors/owners

As is usual for the hackspace, we have far more ideas and projects than we have members with the time available to work on them. Some of the projects that are seeking contributors are;

1) Biohack-reactor;

We'd like to build a bioreactor to maintain chemostatic cultures...

2) Dinos algae-chamber

Unfortunately, the dinos were killed by the summer heat, so I'd like to re-establish the cultures from offsite and try and ensure they survive, and better understand their vulnerabilities. Then we plan some future experiments based on varying their environmental parameters, and to maximise their growth to potentially use them as a source for protein extraction.

3) Biolab tidy up and streamlining of kit/supplies stored there

Recently, and on the Positive side, we have gained a lot of equipment and lab supplies to do experiments with, however on the negative side, its hard to do anything in the lab because it is full of equipment and supplies. I'd like to focus the lab on useful stuff, rather than stuff that might at some vague point in future be useful. As one persons junk is another persons' valuable source of bio-hacking gold, I think it would be useful to get a few more people involved in that to decide what is important.

4) Tepnel Robot

We have an automated DNA purification system robot, which is looking for a maintainer;

5) UV cured resin/bio-compatible 3d printing, would like to

i) Start a pledge for a filament extruder

ii) build or buy components for a UV cured resin 3d printer

6) Biohackspace.org website improvements. Decide what would make things better and more accessible. Generate more content.

Obviously I've missed loads of stuff that has happened, and so I will leave that for another email.

Cheers,

Tom

[Brian Degger]

Tom.and the london Biohackers...That's so great. So much productivity from one tiny space. Will the beer igem project continue?

On a similar  Have you been heard of thr beer decoded people in Switzerland.
They are re covering yeasts and subjecting them to meta genomic analysis.

Up here at Newcastle Maker Space, we will be building a 3x2m micro brew lab..I already regularly do seasonal  elderflower champagne and elderberry wine and finnish sima (alcoholic lemonade).

Cheers
@drbrian

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