Mohor Mukherjee

iGEM 2010

An overview:

Designers and biology. Confusion in minds. Well stepping out of the visual world depicting our minds and stepping into synthetic biology was not exactly a big leap but it was a sure headed decision. Not like I was an avid biology lover but I never really had an issue as long as I could make sense of it. I consider it to be just another part how our system works besides the political, the geographical, the economical etc. And to bind all this together is design. Which to be or to not be considered is related to everything. Hence here we as a part of a design school taking part in a synthetic biology project.

10th May

Landing into Bioland, Basement Computer Room, Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology. Our very enthusiastic facilitator Yashas and most of the participants as residents , not to forget Avy walking in and out with “you have intruded my land look”. So we start our iGEM project. Discussions, questions, vague ideas were predominant topics of the day. Soon we moved on to our much awaited introduction with Dr.David Sadava’s lecture videos. Interesting...mind-boggling and a heavy start to the project. Basics of biology-cell theory are what we learnt about today. Memories were brought back of sitting in school and attending biology classes and scribbling here and there. By lunch break I was sick.

11th May

Down with fever. :( But I was doing research on e.coli, evolution, Darwin and articles about Genetics.

12th May

Back to catching up with yesterday’s work. Saw the webcam that has been used as a microscope. Quite interesting. Learning more about chromosomes, their functions, allele, genes, mutations, how duplications in biology are termed as replications and in depth about genetic material. So by the end of the day I was already humming some random tune saying ATGC..ATGC..ATGC.......!

13th May

Writing the chemical form of a protein molecule showing the bonds brought back memories and built up some kind of enthusiasm contrarily. Biochemical pathway, thermodynamics led the way of learning today to gene transcription, gene translation, genetic coding and descent with modification. Atleast it got me to wonder if each of us are results of some genetic mutation while having a discussion with Anusha. Learnt about ricin and how Sadava describes it with his expressions as “scary”...”poisonous”! In the process as a start to our experiments "we need to extract DNA asap!" –Yashas.

14th May

An extensive discussion on genetic damage and cancer was intriguing. Further it led to bio-informatics, hierarchical sequencing, shot-gun sequencing and of-course re-combinant DNA. It’s been four days and we are quite loaded with biological terms. Hoping to have them on our finger tips soon.

17th May

Didn’t know that biology could be so experimental..to the extent of reverse genetics! An intensive study of how synthetic DNA can be used to make new genes! Besides, today we had to design our own organism and it could be even fantastical! Yay! So I am thinking....

19th May

“Innovation is disruptive because it challenges assumptions and creates hybrids” – learning of the day from Zack besides having extracted Aaron’s DNA from his cheek cells. Zack gave us a talk about food production and eating disorders and led us to knowing terms like biohackers, geohackers etc. He gave us an insight into cross species cookbooks, transgenic food etc. It feels quite good to be exposed to so much of knowledge. Hopefully I can make use of it someday.

20th May

I think I know what my organism does by now. I haven’t named it as yet but I am quite kicked about its functionalities. It gets produced in our saliva after a particular number of chewings. It’s an organism that cleans our environment with the help of its 99% water content. So basically those ugly gutkha and pan stains dissolve and clears up. Yay!

21st May

We are working on our next assignment of designing a machine that may or may not have any functions. Realised how difficult it is to think about something of the kind without a purpose. Finally came up with this machine that reads the stress or lack of concentration in your head and takes you for a puzzle walk. It was more like transferring into a different world to get rid of the mental block. This puzzle walk sounds a little crazy since it takes one for a physical walk...so one might be in mid air but does not interrupt the surroundings. The walk is entirely in a different world once the machine starts functioning! I really wish I could make something of the kind in reality.

24th May

I finally have a drawing of my organism. And I have named it also. It’s called CLEAGUEW (one which cleans gutkha and chewing gum). This is what it looks like :

25th May

We visited NCBS today. The place is so welcoming to work at. It was really nice to just hang around. Over hanging around we found ourselves a place under the trees to have a discussion. The topic started with our take on the campus and its environment. The discussion eventually turned towards whether its a worthy investment considering the existence of a large amount of poverty stricken population in the country. I don’t think it was a worthy discussion to have being a third party. Whichever sides we take is going to have its pros and cons..so I didn’t even consider commenting. Mainly because each statement we say is going to be contradictory because we don’t have any kind of first hand proof with us. Eventually over lunch we started varied discussions with people there. We got into a hard core discussion with education reformation in the country and the regular issues etc. It was quite nice to have these discussions and look at varied view points,and most importantly from different age-groups.

26th May

We are back to seeing David Sadava after a long break! The video got me adding to my research book again. I like it! We learnt about bio-remediation and how pseudomonas putida helps to break down trinitrotoluene present in landmines. Further it was about extremophiles, radiation repair system, bacteria used for mining etc. We learnt extensively about Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR and Kary Mullis’s fantastic work on it. Learning really fantastic things here over summer but homesickness calls quite often. Nevertheless, got to hang in there.

27th May

We have started working on another assignment which wants us to create an art piece using a live organism. As for my first attempt I shall be trying to grow yeast on a plant and watch the consequences. I really don’t know whether it’s going to work out but I want to try it out. The nearby bakeries or groceries do not have yeast for the next couple of days! Wow!

28th May

Attending class was more for working on the living organism project and further researches.

31st May

My plant is here. I found very little yeast from somewhere the other day. Hence it’s not working. Tomorrow Samrajni is getting me yeast! So yay! I hope things work my way!