iGEM of UBC

The Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory (AMBL) will be holding a special one-day Science Field Trip FREE for UBC iGEM members! You will be performing DNA fingerprinting analysis – commonly used by forensic scientists and CSI – to check for genetic elements in your own DNA. Using the powerful PCR technique, you will be isolating and amplifying your DNA then analyzing it for the Alu genetic element. This field trip promises to a fun and entertaining way to get into contemporary molecular biology!

Where: Advanced Molecular Biology Lab, Michael Smith Laboratories, UBC (Map)
When: Friday May 14th, 2010
How to Sign Up: RSVP Here. Spaces are limited and FREE Admission for iGEM Club Members and only $5 for non-members. Password: check in by e-mailing the execs.

Eric Finlay will be providing snacks for the talk that Shing will be presenting, titled “Rocking the Petabyte Age: Bioinformatics”, as an introduction to bioinformatics, a field with which he has gained considerable expertise in as an undergraduate. So come on down and get a feel for what bioinformatics is from one of your peers who’s an experienced hand at it!

Please RSVP on the Doodle!

• Date: 25 November 2009
• Time: 4:30PM to 5:30PM
• Venue: MSL226
• Speaker: Shing Hei Zhan
• Title: Rocking the Pentabyte Age: Bioinformatics
• Snacks: Eric Finlay

Nov 25 4:30pm in MSL. Details will come soon!

The next JC meeting is going to be held on the 18th of November 2009. As per everybody’s request, we have changed the time to start at 4:30PM. Because of room bookings, we will be holding the meeting at MSL226 instead of MSL101. Please be punctual, as the MSL locks down at 5:00PM!

This coming JC, Amelia will be presenting a paper titled, Engineering the Salmonella type III secretion system to export spider silk monomers. Amelia is the iGEM of UBC Club’s secretary, and was one of the big driving forces behind the iGEM project last year, performing many assemblies and designing the bulk of our characterization experiments. (She was our “Queen of Cloning” on the team.) Amelia also co-presented the team’s poster at the OGI-IDT Synthetic Biology Symposia, as well as at this year’s iGEM Jamboree.

As Eric had mentioned at the previous JC meeting, he has started a wiki to generate discussion on the paper/topic presented that week. The goals for this are three-fold:

* Allow speakers to get constructive feedback on how they’re presenting
* Generate discussion of ideas for next year’s team
* Become familiar with wiki syntax, as iGEM focuses heavily on using wikis to report your work.

You can find the discussions page at: http://discussions.ubcigem.com/. This is a good place for you to demonstrate your passion for synthetic biology, as well as your potential (esp. in terms of ideas!) for being on the team next year as well. Please check out the discussion for the first talk that Eric gave, and be prepared to generate discussion for Amelia’s presentation!

So, in summary, here’s the details:

* Date: 18 November 2009
* Time: 4:30PM – 5:30PM (please be punctual!)
* Venue: MSL226
* Presenter: Amelia Hardjasa
o Paper: Engineering the Salmonella type III secretion system to export spider silk monomers
* Snacks: Eric Ma
* Links:
o Discussions: http://discussions.ubcigem.com/
o RSVP: http://www.doodle.com/dk8hegx4gx2ywbd2
o Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=203918505428&ref=mf

See you there!!

Our first big planned event is the “Journal Club” series, where we bring people together to discuss cunning edge scientific research in Synthetic Biology. This is also the place where next year’s project will be formed and evaluated. We have planned it to take place after we return from the Jamboree, specifically on 4th November 2009 at 5pm. For each session, there will be one presenter and one snack provider (free food – another reason you should come!). The meetings will run weekly. We’d like to invite you all to come and join us in this friendly and engaging environment to learn from each other about synthetic biology.