Team:Deerfield MA

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This is a template page. READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS.
You are provided with this team page template with which to start the iGEM season. You may choose to personalize it to fit your team but keep the same "look." Or you may choose to take your team wiki to a different level and design your own wiki. You can find some examples HERE.
You MUST have the following information on your wiki:
  • a team description
  • project description
  • safety information (did your team take a safety training course? were you supervised in the lab?)
  • team attribution (who did what part of your project?)
You may also wish to add other page such as:
  • lab notebook
  • sponsor information
  • other information
REMEMBER, keep all of your pages within your teams namespace.
Example: 2013hs.igem.org/Team:Deerfield_MA/Our_Pets



You can write a background of your team here. Give us a background of your team, the members, etc. Or tell us more about something of your choosing.
Deerfield MA logo.png

Tell us more about your project. Give us background. Use this as the abstract of your project. Be descriptive but concise (1-2 paragraphs)

Your team picture
Team Deerfield_MA


Official Team Profile

Contents

Team

The Deerfield, MA iGEM team is composed of students from Deerfield Academy and Frontier Regional High School. Deerfield Academy is a boarding school located in Western Massachusetts, while Frontier Regional High School is located in proximity to Deerfield.


Mercury poisoning is a serious problem, which can devastate fish populations and ecosystems. Humans who consume contaminated fish may experience negative affects as a result. The Deerfield, MA iGEM Team has proposed a remedy to this issue with the aid of a biosensor. Our goal is to manipulate the system found in part K346001 that uses the merR gene to detect mercury, and then either promote or suppress a reporter gene. Previously GFP has been used as the reporter, but our plan is to test a few different reporters including Lumazine (K216007) and LacZ (I0500). We will test for transform efficiency, reporter strength, and objective overall succes to find which reporter is most effective in this system. Once these transformed cells are produced, someone (i.e. a fisherman) would be able to take a water sample in the area he or she plans to fish, allow the cells to inoculate overnight in the water sample, and then discover whether mercury is present in the water source. Depending on the output, the cells may be able to detect the severity of the contamination.

Notebook

Show us how you spent your days.


Results/Conclusions

What did you achieve over the course of your semester?


Safety

We will be using Mercury 2+ as compared to Mercury for our experiments for two reasons: Mercury is not soluble in water and is less safe to work with than Mercury 2+.

Attributions

Who worked on what?


Human Practices

The toxic metal known as Mercury is sometimes found in water sources such as rivers and lakes. Mercury damages the ecosystems and is harmful to wildlife. If a fisherman catches a fish that has been contaminated with mercury, the results can prove hazardous. One remedy to this issue is to create a biosensor with the ability to detect whether mercury is present in a water source. If a someone such as a fisherman took a water sample from an area, and then allowed it to inoculate overnight with our biosensor, he or she would be able to detect whether Mercury is present and potentially to what level of severity the area has been contaminated.

Fun!

What was your favorite team snack?? Have a picture of your team mascot?


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