BioBlitz Event In Evington Park

On Saturday, the University of Leicester iGEM Team headed to Evington Park to join the BioBlitz event and tell the public about our project.

Anthony Cox and William Harrison.

Bioblitz events are a fantastic way for the community to get involved with the wildlife on their doorstep. The aim is to record as many different species as possible within a certain time frame and to encourage the public's interest and knowledge of local biodiversity. Scientists, students and the community come together in local green spaces for a great educational day out. This brings together people of all backgrounds, just like the Citizen Science aspect of our iGEM project.

Leicester City Council, in partnership with Groundwork Leicester and Leicestershire County Council have hosted Bioblitz events in the city's parks. These are becoming an annual event, receiving the support of City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby through his 100 Day Actions.

Bioblitz Evington Park, Sunday 27th May
Despite the sunshine, the park was initially quite quiet from 10am, giving Nathan the opportunity to create a few informational posters (and play on the nearby childrens' playground). The crowd picked up a little later, allowing us to tell the public about our project, sell some of our citizen science experiment kits, and give away some of the pens kindly donated to us by our friends in the University of Leicester Environment Team (at least when we weren't busy chasing kits and leaflets that were blowing away - it was a very windy day!). Both the iGEM team and the Bioblitz visitors enjoyed a gorgeous afternoon soaking up the sunshine and learning about the wildlife all around us.

We will also be taking part in the University of Leicester Environment team BioBlitz event on the 15th-16th June (for more information please visit www.le.ac.uk/environment/biodiversity), with the aim to identify at least 500 different species on the university estates.

Also this will be one of the last chances to pick yourself up a UoL Citizen Science experiment kit in person, so don't delay!

A Gift From Heathrow Scientific

A huge thanks to our sponsor Heathrow Scientific: Literally delivering the goods!

Left to right: Anthony Cox, Luke Thompson, Christopher Morton,
and Mark Shelton.

We're all getting really excited as the iGEM lab at the University of Leicester is starting to take shape - this week we have received around £2000 worth of scientific equipment from our valued sponsors, Heathrow Scientific!

Dr Badge, Christopher, Luke and I met up with the company's Global Sales Director, Mark Shelton, in a University car park to receive the delivery: a trolley load of ex-display laboratory equipment. We had time to chat with Mark about the project and for him to take us through the collection of equipment and consumable items.

Luke Thompson, with a selection of the Equipment

The boxes of equipment included (amongst many other things) a cute mini-centrifuge, a very fancy orbital shaker, a Rota-Filler 3000 (a type of pipette filler for larger volumes) and a wide assortment of containers, dispensers and tube racks. The  racks included an adjustable universal test tube rack that you could turn upside down for easy emptying of liquids, which got Chris particularly excited!            

Alongside Bioline, IDT and Promega, Heathrow Scientific are a much appreciated sponsor of our project, and have come through with tangible support as we begin the process of getting the Leicester iGEM lab up and running.

Of course we will ensure that the new equipment will be put to good use over the summer and we'll be documenting how important this equipment is to the iGEM project on the wiki... perhaps we should have a competition to come up names for the kit?

It is fantastic that, despite the dire economic situation, companies like Heathrow Scientific are still able to come up with creative ways to support great ideas like iGEM, and their contribution is hugely significant.

Links to all of our sponsors websites can be found at the bottom of the home page of the blog.

Anthony Cox - Vice Project Leader


with help from
Christopher Morton - Project leader

In the Media

Within the last few days, the team has appeared several times in the media. Most notably, we appeared on the BBC website yesterday (20th May): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk after Our Project leader Christopher Morton appeared on the Ben Jackson Show on BBC Radio Leicester (available on iPlayer until the 25th of may).

Today (21st May) we've appeared in Packaging News: http://www.packagingnews.co.uk/news

We also appeared in a University of Leicester press release on the 18th May (which can be read here: http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press), so don't be surprised to see us crop up elsewhere shortly!

More can be found out about our citizen science experiment on the citizen science page. The kit can be bought here on the blog by the PayPal button to your left, however this is limited to the United Kingdom only. You can also email the team at igem@leicester.ac.uk for any questions or for alternate methods to buy a experiment kit.


Thank you,
Luke Thompson
Lab Leader