iGEM's next top model?

Hey there! So I’m a little late with this entry…hopefully none of you are too crushed by this. As a refresher, I’m Vicki, and we’ve already met repeatedly over lab editions. With my fabulous team of brilliance – Carol, Chinee, Kevin, Afshin and Iman – we’re going to give the term “America’s next top model” a whole new meaning.

It has been a very busy week of searching for reaction constants for our differential and membrane-computing efforts. Indeed, the literature is vast, but it sure isn’t easy to navigate. And it doesn’t help when published authors don’t really seem to make effective communication a priority. Regardless, we’re progressing, slowly but surely.

We have also been discussing how we’re going to approach the circuit characterisation matter. After a long and fruitful chat on what others have done previously to characterise their signalling circuits, we came up with a list of areas for which quantitative characterisation would be useful AND realistic to achieve. Because as much as we want to pay for sequencing every day to assess circuit stability, it doesn’t seem like the most effective use of our funds, especially with so other areas (read: ice cream parties) where the money would be better spent! We also outlined general procedure approaches that would enable us to collect the data to come up with and validate our models. Stay tuned!