This blog is where we share stories, announcements, and insights from around the iGEM community.
All in iGEM Blog
At iGEM, people can freely think about the future, and most importantly, how they want to get there. We invite you to join us at the second edition of the Responsibility Conference at the 2023 iGEM Grand Jamboree. The conference offers a platform for multi-stakeholder engagement to deliberate ongoing initiatives and emerging concerns in the realms of biorisk, biosecurity, and biosafety.
Tomorrow is the iGEM 2023 wiki freeze – a moment each and every iGEM team experiences and remembers long after the freeze has passed. During these final moments before the freeze, and in the days ahead, we thought you might enjoy looking forward to some of the fun and cool things that await you in Paris. While you won’t want to miss a moment of the Grand Jamboree, there’s much to enjoy in Paris if you arrive early or stay a bit longer.
GenScript's founders recognized that limited access to high-quality and reliable reagents significantly restricted advances in life science research. Therefore, for over 20 years, GenScript has developed, adopted, and improved upon many innovative synthetic biology technologies, expanded its footprint, and established partnerships with scientists globally. Among these partnerships, GenScript's connection with the iGEM community is of particular significance. iGEM enables aspiring young scientists to imagine and collaborate in creating solutions for a brighter future with synthetic biology.
Teams that participate in the iGEM Competition are pioneers of synthetic biology, and these grants empower teams to secure funding for impactful projects in responding to climate change and biodiversity loss, enhancing human health, improving agriculture production and food security, scaling up the sustainable industrial production, and many other critical challenges.
Software plays a transformative role in driving advances in synthetic biology. From designing biological systems and automating lab equipment, to managing collaborations and analyzing vast amounts of data, software underpins many of the essential tasks in making biology easier to engineer.
The iGEM team wiki is the primary means by which teams communicate their entire project to the world. The wiki is essentially a website that provides background information, describes project goals, and shows experimental results. Like other forms of scientific publication, the wiki also includes references to acknowledge the work of previous iGEM teams and other research groups that have helped inform the current project. Importantly, the team wiki has been a key deliverable since iGEM first became an international competition in 2005, and is archived so it can be accessed by future teams and iGEM community members.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of iGEM, a non-profit organization dedicated to education of the next generation of researchers and entrepreneurs in the field of synthetic biology. This year also marks the 10th anniversary of IDT being a platinum sponsor of one of the most prestigious and sought-after synthetic biology (synbio) competitions in the world. To commemorate these two anniversaries, let’s take a look back on how iGEM began and how IDT is supporting the future leaders of synthetic biology.
In this blog, meet Marija Kesic, Research Assistant at bit.bio who transitioned from a former competitor to a mentor. She discusses the role she plays in supporting teams' work and explains the objectives of the mentorship programme and how it helps teams gain insights from someone with firsthand iGEM experience and receive guidance on various aspects of their projects.
While all iGEM teams push the boundaries of synthetic biology, teams who undertake plant projects must overcome a challenge that is particular to plants – namely, that plants take a long time to grow. One reason iGEM teams are successful in pioneering plant synthetic biology is because the teams that have come before have expended effort to get plants to grow within the timeframe of an iGEM Competition season. In honor of the 20th year of iGEM, we thought we’d take a look back on the achievements of some of the teams that have pioneered plant synthetic biology.
Hardware, Software, Wetware – all are encompassed within the Design-Build-Test-Learn cycle of synthetic biology. In honor of 20 years of iGEM, we’d like to feature the Hardware developed by iGEM teams.
Synthetic biology holds tremendous promise for addressing global challenges, but like all powerful technologies, there also are risks of accidental or deliberate misuse that could cause harm. In honor of the 20th year of iGEM, I’d like to take a look back on some of the highlights of iGEM’s history in building a strong culture of responsibility for biosafety and biosecurity.
Twenty years ago, scientists were using an ad hoc approach to assemble genetic constructs, which required a lot of time and did not always work as anticipated. Tom Knight, an engineer by training, thought that applying standard engineering mechanisms could make the assembly of genetic constructs more reliable. And so, in 2003, Tom proposed an assembly method for standard biological parts, or “BioBricks”.
We’re 250 years into the industrial revolution, which is about being good at energy. We’re 70 years into the computer revolution, which is about being good at information. Now we’re at the beginning of the next revolution, which is about being good at matter, and the best tool for that is biology.
When I first heard about iGEM in 2021, I was looking for a way to help mentor and communicate with younger scientists about their research. Though it was uncertain as to whether the Jamboree would be virtual or not because of COVID-19, I wanted to get involved. I applied and was accepted to serve as a judge.
In the first post on “What is iGEM?” I asked you, the readers of the iGEM blog, to share what iGEM means to you. One of the common themes in the responses received so far is: iGEM is the pioneering organization of synthetic biology.
Industrial scale-up helps bridge the gap between laboratory experiments and real-world implementation by addressing technical, economic, and practical challenges. Because industrial scale-up will require significant innovations if synthetic biology is to continue being a game-changing industry, the iGEM Competition has an entire Village dedicated to the challenges of industrial scale-up.
Yeast spores are typically not considered a problem in most situations. However, yeast spores can become problematic under certain circumstances. To help mitigate this risk, all teams who want to work with spore-forming fungi, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, must first complete a Check-In Form to get permission from iGEM’s Safety and Security Committee.
As the iGEM Competition evolves each year, so does the way we do judging. For example, the last major changes occurred during the pandemic years and made it possible for all teams to participate whether they could access a laboratory or not. Now that pandemic restrictions have eased and teams are back in the lab, the Judging Committee has reviewed the judging criteria and the feedback we received, and have defined a few goals for the 2023 Competition.
The experience that you are about to begin is truly unique. You will be given the opportunity to dream up solutions with your multi-talented team, gain meaningful insights by engaging directly with the very stakeholders who you wish to impact, and learn how to advocate for your ideas to gain the space and funding to execute on them. An iGEM Project is a crash course in the essential skills that are needed to bring a project to life.
This year, iGEM is introducing three new Villages – Agriculture, Bioremediation, and Space. Though iGEM teams have worked on projects in these areas for many years, this will be the first time teams will be gathered together within these official Villages.
