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4 Great Teams From iGEM 2009 (Videos)

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by Aaron Saenz on December 3rd, 2009
Cambridge University won this year's iGEM competition for their pigment producing bacteria.

Cambridge University won this year's iGEM competition for their pigment producing bacteria.

iGEM harnesses two of the most potentially powerful resources on our planet: synthetic biology and youth. The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition took place during the Halloween weekend this year, as always hosted by MIT. College aged (and sometimes younger) students from around the world came together to display the genetically manipulated microorganisms they had produced during the year. Using MIT’s Registry for Standard Biological Parts, competitors were able to transform bacteria into biological machines that could accomplish amazing tasks. Mac Cowell from DIYBio was in attendance at the jamboree during iGEM and recorded some of his conversations with various teams. Check out those videos after the break.

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OpenWetWare – The Wikipedia of Biology

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by Aaron Saenz on October 19th, 2009

openwetwareDepending on who you ask wikis are either the distilled divinity collected from humanity or the online equivalent of mob violence. By definition, wikis are simply a tool by which multiple users can build and edit webpages on a website, but in their application they have promise to be much more. Since 2005, OpenWetWare has served as a hub for all manner of biological information. It is a reference source containing information on materials, protocols for biological experiments, schematics, and experimental results. There are nearly 7000 users from all over the globe, most of them research scientists, editing 13,000+ pages of content. OpenWetWare has the potential to become the more reliable, biologically minded cousin to Wikipedia and I’m very impressed with it.

In the traditional model of scientific progress, researchers share information through two channels: published research and discussions at conferences. Six to twelve months could pass before one scientist learns about the discoveries made by another. OpenWetWare is a precursor to Science 2.0, a new paradigm wherein research learns some of the lessons of open source computer programming. By sharing information quickly online, scientists could reduce the duplication of work, create a quicker dialogue between teams, and develop dynamic and productive collaborations. In other words, the democratic dissemination of information would increase the efficiency of the scientific community, accelerating the rate at which the world benefits from their discoveries.
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iGEM 2009: Synthetic Biology Competition Bigger than Ever this Halloween

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by Aaron Saenz on September 24th, 2009

igem-2009Like some Frankenstein monster composed of space camp, graduate school, and science fair, iGEM is ready to spring to life this Halloween. The International Genetic Engineering Machine competition is now in its 6th iteration and will feature some of the best undergraduate work in synthetic biology the world has ever seen. The main jamboree from Oct 31st to Nov 2nd will allow the more than 110 teams competing to reveal the successes and failures from their summer long foray into the laboratory. As always, iGEM is hosted by MIT and the public is invited to attend the awards ceremony on Sunday November 1st at 8am. If you’re in the Boston area, you definitely want to go. Last year’s winners included bacteria that could produce electricity, e.coli that could hunt and kill other pathogens, and yeast that could give beer high levels of resveratrol.

Synthetic biology has been called the science of the 21st century. Rewriting the genetic information of micro organisms can allow scientists to create new genetic machines that can perform extraordinary tasks. You remember MIT’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts we discussed? iGEM teams are given access to that database in order to come up with useful, interesting, or just plain cool genetic machines for the competition. MIT is allowing these undergraduates access to some of the most advanced synthetic biology tools of today in the hopes of developing students into the best genetic engineers of tomorrow. That’s exciting stuff.

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