This is the spe­cific process that we ad­hered to on a daily ba­sis through­out the en­tire iGEM pe­riod.

Stubble Decomposition

Access pdf note­book here

Bioplastic and Proof of Concept

Date Event
20 — May — 2022 Proposed the idea of bio­plas­tic in front of whole team.
27 — May — 2022 Presented the de­vel­oped idea in front of whole team.
28 — May — 2022 Mailed the idea to Dr. Aasheesh Srivastava to take his in­puts.
02 — June — 2022 Meeting with Dr. Aasheesh Srivastava to take per­mis­sion to un­der­take the ex­per­i­ment in his lab.
30 — June — 2022 Formal Request sent to use Aasheesh Srivastava’s Lab to de­velop Bioplastics in his lab
02 — July — 2022 Trial 01 of ex­tract­ing the Vanillin out of wheat straw started. Result: Aromatic Compound de­tected at first, but it’s not Vanillin!
06 — July — 2022 Meeting with Aasheesh Sir to dis­cuss the trou­bleshoot­ing of the ex­per­i­ment.
07 — July — 2022 Trial 02 of ex­tract­ing Vanillin Started. Result: No de­tec­tion of aro­matic com­pound, Failed
08 — July — 2022 Meeting with Aasheesh Sir to dis­cuss the trou­bleshoot­ing of the ex­per­i­ment.
09 — July — 2022 Trial 03 to ex­tract Lignin out of Straw ini­ti­ated.
10– July — 2022 Trial 03 Result: 3.152 grams of lignin suc­cess­fully ex­tracted out of 10 grams of Straws. Initiated ex­trac­tion of vanillin out of lignin.
13 — July -2022 Troubleshooting of the ex­per­i­ment with the help of Aasheesh Sir to dis­cuss the prob­lems faced in trial 03 of the ex­per­i­ment.
15-July- 2022 Vanillin de­tected on TLC
20– July -2022 Phase 2 of ex­per­i­ment started which in­cluded for­ma­tion of Acetyl fer­ulic acid
From Vanillin
21– July -2022 Trial 1 of phase 2 ex­per­i­ment failed and dis­cussed the is­sues for the next trial
23– July -2022 Trial 2 of ex­tract­ing Acetyl fer­ulic acid ex­per­i­ment started.
27– July -2022 Acetyl fer­ulic acid fi­nally ex­tracted and ini­ti­ated the poly­meri­sa­tion step for the test re­ac­tion.
09–August-2022 We started de­vel­op­ing the Bioplastic for Polymerisation and kept it in the hot air oven for dry­ing
12–August-2022 As Bioplastic was still wet, we re — moulded the plas­tic into a thin sheet
16–August-2022 Dried Plastic was ob­tained and stored in a petri plate.
10 — September — 2022 Upscaling of Bioplastics Started.
26 — September — 2022 Bioplastic mould was ready and dyed
03 — October — 2022 Dried Bioplastic was ob­tained, weighed and stored. Bioplastic degra­da­tion tests ini­ti­ated.
07 — October — 2022 Test to de­ter­mine the bac­te­r­ial com­po­si­tion af­ter de­com­po­si­tion of bio­plas­tics ini­ti­ated
09 — October — 2022 Degradation tests con­cluded, re­ports com­pleted and up­loaded on web­site.