Team:ULaval/Notebook

ULAVAL BAR Template

This page summarizes the timeline of our project this year. As you can see we formed our team in January, discussed multiple project ideas in Feburary and chose our first project idea in March, that changed along the way until July, when we chose our final project idea. From there, we contacted professors in our university to help us with the science aspect of our project until mid-October. From there, we focused on the delivrables for iGEM such as the wiki, the 20 minute presentation and our poster.

Date Description
January 2020 Team members recrutment
Date Description
February 2020 Team structure established
Date Description
March 2020 We started sending emails to companies for funding.
March 11, 2020 We voted for our project. At first we wanted to use synthetic biology to control the composition of the biofilm found in the tubing system connecting the maple trees to the sugar shack. The gofundme was shared during that week.
March 13, 2020 The government shut down universities, from then all meetings were done online.
March 25, 2020 Organised our meeting with iGEM ambassadors to ask questions about the future of our project this year. We started our scientific research on microorganisms in the biofilm we want to work on.
Date Description
April 8, 2020 We contacted Marie Filteau and Luc Lagacé to talk about our project and get some feedback.
April 14, 2020 Interview with Marie Filteau, who talked about maple syrup production and suggested other project ideas because ours would be too difficult. Meeting with Jean-François Sénéchal to talk about ethics in science.
April 15, 2020 General team meeting where we decided to focus on ropy maple syrup and discussed using dextranases, we either want to insert the treatment in the tubing system or in the tube right before the reverse osmosis process.
April 22, 2020 General team meeting where we decided to pause funding for the time being, because of COVID-19. We also had our first meeting with UConcordia. We started writing our surveys for producers and clients. We had more discussions on the science aspect of the project, we talked about how to apply our dextranase to a plastic support before the reverse osmosis process. Planning our interview with Forces Avenir.
April 29, 2020 Discussion with François, one of our mentors who gave us important information for our project.
Date Description
May 6, 2020 General team meeting where we voted for questions for the final version of our producer survey, had more discussions in science, especially applicating the dextranase on plastic balls.
May 11, 2020 General team meeting where we planned questions for our interview with Luc Lagacé. For the science aspect, we discussed the pros and cons of using either a cellular or acellular system, we decided on a acellular system because it simplifies the job.
May 14, 2020 Interview with Luc Lagacé, he suggested we focus our work on buddy syrup, another type of undesirable syrup, because more money is lost because of it.
May 20, 2020 Science meeting discussing new project ideas: (1) continue with our project idea (dextranase treatment before the osmosis filter); (2) transform invaluable syrup (ropy or buddy syrup) into another product such as a biofuel; (3) develop a kit that would help producers detect molecules that cause buddy syrup
May 21, 2020 Presentation of our teams project finished last year to Forces Avenir, a provincial competition that describes itself as aiming to recognize, honor and promote student engagement in projects that contribute to the formation of conscious, responsible, active and persevering citizens, both rooted in their community and open to the world.
May 25, 2020 Science meeting: we want to either keep our 1st or third project discussed on May 20th. We also received feedback from Jean-Francois Sénéchal concerning our survey, we improved it and started calling producers to answer our survey.
Date Description
June 6, 2020 Interview with the MAPAQ to discuss laws related to maple syrup in quebec. They suggested we focus on maple syrup transformation (our third idea discussed on May 20th)
June 8, 2020 Science meeting: thanks to the MAPAQ, we wanted to try and transform buddy syrup into an alcoholic beverage. We sent an email to Luc Lagacé to see if producers could extend their season to make more byddy syrup that could be transformed into alcohol.
June 17, 2020 iGEM concordia contacted us to do a scientific comunication colaboration with us. For the science aspect of our project, we did some research on molecules that give a bad taste to buddy syrup.
June 22, 2020 Luc Lagacé gave us a contact to answer our question about extending the season. This contact gave us another name: Vincent Poisson, who can answer our questions.
June 29, 2020 General team meeting where we started developping our team logo. With iGEM Concordia, we started meeting weekly to plan two scientific communication conferences with experts in food sustainability and synthetic biology.
June 30, 2020 Interview with Vincent Poisson who told us that a professor in Quebec is already working on making alcohol from buddy syrup and another is working on detecting buddy syrup molecules in maple sap. He told us that ropy syrup will become a problem that ewill be more and more important with the industrialisation of maple syrup production and climate change. He gave us multiple names to contact for further questions.
Date Description
July 6, 2020 Interview with the professor working in alcohol production from buddy syrup. He confirmed that he can make alcohol without modifying the syrup. He said that our project could have a lot of potential of we end up with a product that has good organoleptic properties. He also said that ropy syrup could be a good project idea
July 8, 2020 General team meeting where we decided that a project on transforming rupy syrup into a base could be a realistic project for iGEM. We decided not to try and make alcohol from ropy syrup because one of our team members knows a producer who is able to do so without modifying it. For our producer survey, Jose started analysing the results to get valueable information. Joanna contacted radio stations to talk about our project on the morning radio.
July 13, 2020 Joanna talked abour our project on the radio. During our group meeting that day, we planned our project for this year and the next.
July 22, 2020 iGEM Delft contacted us to participate in their video colaboration. We also contacted the PPAQ to gain more information about maple syrup production in Quebec.
July 24, 2020 First contact with PPAQ to get more information about ropy syrup in Quebec.
July 25-26, 2020 JulyGEM
July 27, 2020 Track selected: Food and Nutrition
Date Description
August 5, 2020 General team meeting: organisation of an interview with the PPAQ. First pages of our wiki written. For our science aspect, we contacted professors from our university to help us with our dextranase selection.
August 5, 2020 General team meeting: organisation of an interview with the PPAQ. First pages of our wiki written. For our science aspect, we contacted professors from our university to help us with our dextranase selection.
August 12, 2020 Call with stéphane Gagné and Patrick Lagüe to talk about our dextranase candidates.
August 17, 2020 Meeting with the PPAQ to discuss a potential confidentiality agreement to gain funding, resources and information for our project. We contacted iGEM HQ to find out how to fit this agreement into the competition.
August 19, 2020 Our first conference in colaboration with iGEM concordia.
August 19, 2020 General team meeting disussing how to chose candidate dextranases for our project.
August 24, 2020 Discussion with Rong Shi, Manon Couture and Simon Hardy on our project modeling.
August 28, 2020 Meeting with iGEM UChicago to discuss a potential collaboration for next year.
August 31, 2020 General team meeting discussing the wiki layout and the pages we have to write, our team logo and the team promotion video.
Date Description
September 2, 2020 Started doing the BLAST alignments to identify candidate dextranases.
September 3, 2020 Our second conference in colaboration with iGEM concordia
September 9, 2020 General team meeting disucssing the new meeting schedule, and new member recruitment as well as planninng out our first in person meeting.
September 10, 2020 Identified our preliminary 3 dextranase candidates.
September 13, 2020 First in person meeting since March (while social distancing, of course). We talked about our dextranase candidates, our potential confidentiality agreement with the PPAQ, our mini jamboree poster, our promotion video and our social media accounts.
September 16, 2020 Started doing homology modelling of the candidate dextranases and further validation of the active site.
September 17, 2020 General team meeting discussing how we will overexpress our dextranase candidates in E. coli and our promotion video. Benjamin Ouellet practiced his poster presentation for the mini Jamboree.
September 19 - 20, 2020 Mini Jamboree organised by iGEM Concordia
September 21, 2020 Small meeting in person to film our promotion video (while respecting sanitary measures, of course).
September 24, 2020 General team meeting discussing our promotion video and presenting our research for expression of dextranase in E. coli.
September 28, 2020 General team meeting discussig our title and abstract for the Giant Jamboree and we also starting assigning wiki pages to team members to start writting the wiki.
Date Description
October 1, 2020 Call with Marie-Ève Picard, a member of Rong Shi's lab to discuss dextranase expression DNA purification.
October 2, 2020 Call with Marie-Ève Paquet discussing our expression vector constructions with our dextranases.
October 4, 2020 Selected our final dextranase to test experimentally.
October 4, 2020 Virtual all day meeting discussing our vector constructions and writting our wiki.
October 5, 2020 Meeting with Patrick Lagüe to discuss molecular dynamics and docking.
October 5, 2020 General team meeting discussing a collaboration with iGEM UPCH Peru and our plasmid constructions.
October 8, 2020 General team meeting where we presented our plans for different wiki pages that were almost complete, assigning more pages to people and discussed abour recrutment activities this fall.
October 12, 2020 General team meeting where we presented different wiki pages and started two modeling projects: a docking modeling and a molecular dynamics modeling of the dextranases.
October 15, 2020 General team meeting discussing our wiki, our video presentation and an ethical review for a survey we want to do next year.
October 19, 2020 General team meeting discussing our wiki, our poster and the judging form.
October 22, 2020 General team meeting discussing our wiki, the judging form and a recrutment event we want to participate in in November.
October 24 - 25, 2020 Virtual all day meetings related to our wiki and our 20 minute presentation.
October 26, 2020 General team meeting discussing last details related to the wiki .
October 27, 2020 Wiki freeze!!!