The Harvard iGEM Team Wiki and The Future of Laboratory Notebooks

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The Harvard iGEM Team Wiki and The Future of
Laboratory Notebooks

• Kevin Shee
• 07/08/2007

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The Harvard iGEM Team Wiki
Created by Nick
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A Blast to the Past Version 1
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The New Face of Harvards iGEM Team Latest
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What has changed?

• The general color scheme and some basic
  formatting.
• Clean-up of extraneous pages
• Easily-accessible pages created for items of
  importance
• Protocols
• Projects
• Brainstorming
• Media, etc.
• A compiled arrangement of notes and ideas from
  iGEM team meetings.
• Detailed protocols including general and
  team-based/team-attempted.
• In General
• A more team based-effort/notebook as opposed to
  individual lab notebooks.

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Walkthrough
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Meetings

• Presentations from every iGEM meeting uploaded.
• Project meeting notes of details not covered in
  the presentation (usually thanks to Steph)

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Project Pages

• One for each of the projects going on.
• Includes planned work, brainstorming, readings,
  and a link to project protocols.

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In the LabGeneral Protocols

• Protocols provided by kits and machines used,
  such as the Nanodrop and Midi and Maxi Prep kits.
  Also contains other basic protocols such as
  transformation, nucleotide removal, etc.
• Useful for students who need to use a certain
  piece of equipment or need a general guideline to
  perform a specific step.

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In the LabOur Protocols

• The main pages for step-by-step walkthroughs of
  protocols followed by team members, along with
  important conclusions and thoughts.
• Constantly updated so teammates can keep
  continual track of whats going on.
• A way for students to learn without making the
  same mistakes that other team members have made.
• Contains many links to other pages in order to
  access pertinent information.

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Lab NotebooksGels, Plasmids, Sequences, etc.

• Important data resulting from certain procedures,
  both useful and not, all labeled accurately.

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Media CenterPictures and Video

• Recording memories of the team in times of work
  and times of fun.
• Ideally, we are looking to create some sort of
  documentary video that we can release to teach
  other teams about the experience and further gain
  support.

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And finallySome things you never knew you could
do on the Wiki.
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• Wellmaybe that was a bit much
• Anyways, moving on

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Technologys Role in the Future of Laboratory
Practice.

• Have you ever thought about how much expanding
  technology will advance the way we operate in
  lab?
• Sure, we know that more advanced technology will
  speed up processes and make them more
  user-friendly, but what other potential for
  change exists?

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• According to a study regarding technology in
  medical training, respondents unanimously
  expressed that technology skills were important
  in medical training and felt it most important to
  learn about electronic medical records and
  accessing scientific information on the Internet.
  
• (Briscoe GW et al)

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Open and Closed Science(Jean-Claude Bradley)
Open Notebook Science (full transparency)
Open Access Journal Article
Traditional Journal Article
OPEN
Traditional Lab Notebook (unpublished)
CLOSED
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Where is Science headed? (Jean-Claude Bradley)
WE ARE HERE
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Things to Look Into

• Keeping an online lab notebook allows for
  sharing of ideas and a simple transfer/management
  process.
• Open-source projects such as the Harvard 2007
  team Wiki or blogs in order to better collaborate
  a team research effort.
• Making lab benches directly computer accessible,
  with PDAs or something similar used as an
  interface to pull resources and protocols from
  the web, and allowing for direct transfer from
  the lab bench to a wiki, blog, or database.
• Allow students to access/borrow the protocols and
  works of other teams who have worked on similar
  projects, a database that allows for
  communication between researchers with common
  goals.
• Create a common database for researchers around
  the world to submit information and forgo the
  often hazy process of submitting papers and
  waiting for publication
• Etc.

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Planning

• Alain, Mike, and I have been brainstorming ideas
  for a potential paper involving this idea of
  technological innovation in laboratories.
• Potentially hope to write a paper to submit to a
  new journal called Nature Precedings, a place to
  share unpublished manuscripts, presentations,
  posters, white papers, technical papers,
  supplementary findings, and other scientific
  documents.
• From there well see how far it goes.

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Thanks