iGEM is built on decades of work that would not be possible without proper documentation. To contribute to this effort, our team has documented various activities in a way that will help future iGEM teams:
- We have written our protoplast isolation and transfection protocol with other teams’ use in mind. It is documented in a manner that provides detailed context for other teams to know and decide when to use this protocol in comparison to other methods of plant work (which are described in the protocol), and describes nuanced and helpful tips that are essential in protoplast handling. To make it more readily accessible to future teams, we added it as part of the Phototroph Community Handbook, a compilation of protocols for working with phototrophs developed by the UBCO and ASU iGEM teams. Detailed troubleshooting that could help teams with carrying out this protocol can be found in our Engineering Success page, while the downloadable protocol document is in our Protocols page.
- We created a new piece of hardware and robustly documented its design, development, and testing for other teams to use for similar or different applications. Our documentation includes instructions on circuit design and our 3D printed prototype using CAD software, and simulation testing using the MultiSim SPICE emulation software. Flexibility in the design, such as areas where you could use other software or physical components, are mentioned in the instructions to allow future teams to be adaptable when gaining inspiration from this hardware piece. These details can be found in our Models page.