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May 14th
I was looking around from my vantage point over the heads of the people standing at the bus stop when a woman, walking through them, burst into a smile. I looked around again to see if I could spot what made her smile, but couldn’t find anything. I looked at her again, and now she was trying to hold back the smile. I do that too, sometimes, when walking on the streets. Sometimes I think of an old joke, or remember something funny. I thought maybe that was it. I fixed my gaze on her, and watched as she walked past me. When I turned back, an old man in a black coat, wearing a plaid scarf and a grey beret, was looking at me with a kind but mocking grin and a twinkle in his eye.
I wondered if he had noticed my eyes tracking the woman. He edged slightly towards me, so I looked away. When I looked back, he was still staring at me, so I turned away again, this time for longer. When I finally looked back at him again, he was still staring at me with a smile. He took a small step towards me, and said, looking up, “That’s a cosy spot you have there…”
I smiled, “yes it is!” I was sitting on a green water control cabinet, with my arms and legs crossed, swinging my feet. It gave me an extra foot or so of height, and a better view of the street. Maybe it was because of my sister’s cats when I was growing up that I had acquired the habit of looking for a good vantage point when waiting around.
The old man asked, “Are you waiting for a bus, or the end of the world?”
My smile widened into a cheeky grin, “whichever comes first!”
Imperial IGEM’07
Apr 20th
Back in the summer of 2007, I took part in the Imperial College IGEM team. We produced a cell-free biosensor for detecting catheter associated urinary tract infections by exploiting the AHL quorum sensing mechanism used by bacterial cells for coordinating biofilm formation. More information can be found in our IGEM 2007 Wiki and in our OpenWetWare Wiki. The over-arching objective of our project, however, was to demonstrate the viability of a cell-free chassis for synthetic biology, based on purified cell extracts. To that end, we created a whole new chassis section in the MIT Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
Imperial IGEM’07 presentation at the IET BioSysBio 2008
Apr 20th
This was my very first conference presentation!
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Cell-Free Biofilm Biosensor of Catheter related Urinary Tract Infections, Built using Biobricks that Exploit AHL Signalling Pathways in Biofilms D van Swaay Presentation from BioSysBio 2008, Imperial College, London, UK 2008-04-21 12:00:00.0 Electronics Channel |
Update: The webcast link appears to be broken 
