New Villages for 2023: Space, Agriculture, and Bioremediation
The iGEM 2023 Competition season is about to begin. As you and your teammates think about projects, you’ll also want to consider what Village you would like to join. Villages (previously called Tracks) represent the topics that iGEMers are most interested in working on, and serve to bring together teams that are focused on solving specific global challenges.
This year, iGEM is introducing three new Villages – Space, Agriculture, and Bioremediation. 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.
In this post, we’d like to highlight some of the iGEM teams that have worked in the areas of Agriculture and Bioremediation.
Space
For examples of teams that have worked on applying synthetic biology to Space, check out this blog post by Lucas Boldrini.
Agriculture
“If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right.”
Check out these teams who focused on getting agriculture right by applying synthetic biology to feed the growing global population while implementing sustainable practices to ensure a healthy environment:
Imperial_College_London 2022 (United Kingdom) - engineered a broad-spectrum biofungicide that eliminates the time-lag between diagnosis and treatment of fungal pathogens in crops. Gold Medalist, Top Ten, Nominee Best Food & Nutrition Project, Nominee Best Supporting Entrepreneurship, Nominee Best Wiki, Undergrad Division.
INSA_Lyon1 2022 (France) - developed a biosynthetic tool to understand and combat soft rot disease in potatoes and build more sustainable agricultural practices. Gold Medalist, Top Ten, Winner Best Food & Nutrition Project, Best Wiki, Best Presentation, Best Education, Best Hardware, Best New Composite Part, Undergrad Division.
Ecuador 2021 (Ecuador) - created a bacterial platform that produces low-cost biopesticides to fight against plant diseases by using RNAi technology to silence expression of specific targets in the pathogen. Gold Medalist, Top Ten, Winner Best Food & Nutrition Project, Best Model, Best Sustainable Development Impact, Best New Composite Part, Undergrad Division.
UNILausanne 2021 (Switzerland) - took three complementary approaches to tackle the various causes of plant freezing and safeguard plants from frost damage. Gold Medalist, Top Ten, Winner Best Food & Nutrition Project, Overgrad Division.
MiamiU_OH 2021 (United States) - designed a genetic system for Ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) regeneration that could improve agricultural productivity by providing a mechanism to boost plant growth. Gold Medalist, Nominee Best Food & Nutrition, Undergrad Division.
UZurich 2021 (Switzerland) - engineered bacteria-originated outer membrane vesicles as a novel plant protection strategy to minimize crop losses caused by pathogens. Gold Medalist, Winner Best New Application Project, Overgrad Division.
BITSPilani-Goa_India 2020 (India) - devised a biological solution to prevent post-harvest sucrose deterioration in sugarcane. Gold Medalist, Winner Best New Composite Part, Best Software Tool, Undergrad Division.
TUDelft 2020 (Netherlands) - designed a biopesticide consisting of a cocktail of engineered bacteriophages targeting the Enterobacter genus in the gut of the Desert Locust, the most destructive migratory pest in the world that threatens food security. Gold Medalist, Winner Best Food & Nutrition Project, Best Integrated Human Practices, Best New Basic Part, Best New Composite Part, Best Poster, Best Presentation, iGEMers Prize, Safety Commendation, Overgrad Division.
Wageningen_UR 2019 (Netherlands) - engineered a biological solution for Xylella fastidiosa, a devastating plant pathogen threatening olive trees, grapevines and other host plants across Europe. Gold Medalist, First Runner Up for the Grand Prize, Winner Best Food & Nutrition Project, Best Poster, Overgrad Division.
Cardiff_Wales 2018 (United Kingdom) - produced an effective RNAi pesticide against Myzus persicae, a detrimental aphid pest that causes tremendous economic loss for farmers by reducing crop yields and grain sizes. Gold Medalist, Winner Best Plant Synthetic Biology, Undergrad Division.
Newcastle 2018 (United Kingdom) - investigated Pseudomonas fluorescens as a plant-colonizing chassis as a novel system for soil microbiome manipulation without genetically modified crops. Gold Medalist, Nominee Best Measurement, Overgrad Division.
British_Columbia 2017 (Canada) - developed a biological solution for remediating infected soil by engineering a strain of Agrobacterium capable of disarming the pathogenic Agrobacterium tumefaciens that is responsible for many plant diseases. Silver Medalist, Nominee Best Environment Project, Undergrad Division.
Bioremediation
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Check out these teams who took up the challenge of saving our planet by using synthetic biology to clean up water sources, create healthier soil, and improve air quality around the globe:
REC-CHENNAI 2022 (India) - engineered a biological system to reduce the exposure to heavy metal toxicity in industrial wastewater. Gold Medalist, Winner Best Environment Project, Undergrad Division.
Edinburgh-UHAS_Ghana 2022 (Ghana) - created a cell-free biodegradation tool for PET pollution and a bioremediation device for sequestering heavy metals along with a cell-free biosensor to detect heavy metals (mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic) to locate the acutely affected areas of heavy metal pollution. Gold Medalist, Nominee Best Environment Project, Undergrad Division.
Vilnius-Lithuania 2022 (Lithuania) - developed two kinds of plastic-binding peptides that create a complex to capture and remove nanoplastic particles from water. Gold Medalist, Nominee Best Environment Project, Undergrad Division.
Aachen 2022 (Germany) - devised a biological system to recycle phosphate from wastewater and generate polyphosphate for industrial use. Gold Medalist, Nominee Best Environment Project and Best Hardware, Overgrad Division.
Groningen 2021 (Netherlands) - designed a closed, sustainable circle in which ammonia emissions from cows are converted to alpha-amylase, an enzyme that optimizes cattle’s digestion. Gold Medalist, Top Ten, Winner Best Environmental Project, Overgrad Division.
UChicago 2020 (United States) developed a software tool, Optizyme, that uses a novel algorithm to optimize PET plastic degrading pathways. Silver Medalist, Undergrad Division.
Waterloo 2020 (Canada) - developed a column bioreactor containing metal-binding proteins to remove and recover toxic but valuable heavy metals from electronic manufacturing wastewater. Gold Medalist, Nominee Best Manufacturing Project, Undergrad Division.
TU Kaiserslautern 2019 (Germany) developed a biological recycling method for polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a major plastic component, that may be integrated in waste management and water treatment centers to eliminate plastic pollution. Gold Medalist, 2nd Runner-up for the Grand Prize, Winner Best Environment Project, Best Plant Synthetic Biology, Best Poster, Best Wiki, Undergrad Division.
HebrewU 2018 (Israel) - engineered a metabolic pathway for the degradation of dioxins and the detoxification of chlorinated compounds. Gold Medalist, Winner Best Plant Synthetic Biology, Overgrad Division.
Peking 2016 (China) - engineered a multi-functional biological material that can absorb uranyl as an efficient and sustainable way to decontaminate uranium pollution. Gold Medalist, Winner Best Environment Project, Undergrad Division.
SydneyUni_Australia 2013 (Australia) - constructed bacterial strains that can degrade 1,2-dichloroethane (DCA), a chlorinated hydrocarbon from industrial pollution that contaminates the groundwater of Botany Bay in Sydney, Australia. Bronze Medalist, Winner Best Experimental Measurement Approach, Best Human Practices Advance, Asia Regional, Overgrad Division.
Lyon-INSA-ENS 2011 (France) - engineered bacteria able to capture and concentrate cobalt from its environment for use as a biofilter to improve the efficiency of nuclear wastewater treatment and reduce both nuclear waste and the cost of treatment. Gold Medalist, Winner Best New BioBrick Device, Engineered, Europe Regional.
We are proud of all the iGEM teams that have used the tools of synthetic biology to develop sustainable practices to feed the growing global population, and to detoxify contaminants in the air, water, and soil. We’re excited to see how the iGEM 2023 teams will build on this work to tackle challenges in agriculture and bioremediation!
iGEM 2023 teams must submit their Village Preferences by June 29 at 16:00 UTC.
