Welcome to the Wet Lab
Hands-on biology powering ARGUS-2440: experiments, breakthroughs, and discoveries.
ARGUS-2440, or Ammonium Rhizospheric Generation is our solution to the burgeoning challenge of nitrate leaching. The wet lab is where our pipette brandishing, lab coat adorned team members charted a path to mitigating the pressing problem. Our wet lab efforts were focused on understanding biofilm forming capabilities of Pseudomonas putida, characterising basal activity levels of the nitrite reductase pathway and successfully expressing it in our chassis.
Our Workflow
Design
We spent a lot of time planning our project and ironing out any challenges before we started work. Our mentors strongly urged us to adhere to this, since a well planned experiment would significantly reduce the number of variables. This was invaluable, since a detailed design allowed us to identify problems and fix them iteratively.
Build
We performed all the experiments we planned computationally, and used these inputs to guide the actual wet lab work flow. In many cases, this gave us an idea of what wet lab results would look like, or helped choose among multiple experiment designs.
Test
We finally put on our gloves and entered the hood. This was a steep learning curve for most of us, and progress was slow with a lot of challenges. Yet we persevered and made sure to document all our successes and failures.
Learn
The transformative phase at the end of every DBTL cycle, this is where we modified our experiments and drew inferences from results. With guidance from our mentors, this was essential in streamlining our efforts and working towards our proof of concept.
Understand our Wet Lab
Our wet lab consisted of multiple components, beyond just engineering our bacterium. We also conducted literature reviews to plan for future steps, such as application in the soil. Additionally, we designed a kill switch system linked to the environment to minimize biosafety risks.
Experimentation
Detailed overview of all experiments and assay we performed, along with detailed protocols.
Biosafety
We designed an innovative kill switch that would persist across generations, and contributed to making GMO regulations more accessible.
Notebook
Documentation about Wet Lab’s progress during our iGEM cycle.
