Interpreting Religious Heritage

Churches in the city of London are an important part of the religious heritage of the UK, but they lag behind other popular heritage sites in terms of promotion and accessibility. The goal of this project was to identify ways to promote the religious heritage of the UK through improved access to and better curation of the art, artifacts, and architecture of churches. We conducted interviews with stakeholders in heritage and access, distributed a survey to members of a religious heritage organization, and visited numerous churches and other heritage sites in London and southeast England. To conclude, we recommend how church administrators and clergy, the Friends of the City Churches, and other religious heritage organizations can improve access to and promotion of religious heritage

Reproducibility of fluorescent expression from engineered biological constructs in E. coli

We present results of the first large-scale interlaboratory study carried out in synthetic biology, as part of the 2014 and 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competitions. Participants at 88 institutions around the world measured fluorescence from three engineered constitutive constructs in E. coli. Few participants were able to measure absolute fluorescence, so data was analyzed in terms of ratios. Precision was strongly related to fluorescent strength, ranging from 1.54-fold standard deviation for the ratio between strong promoters to 5.75-fold for the ratio between the strongest and weakest promoter, and while host strain did not affect expression ratios, choice of instrument did. This result shows that high quantitative precision and reproducibility of results is possible, while at the same time indicating areas needing improved laboratory practices.Peer reviewe