This blog is where we share stories, announcements, and insights from around the iGEM community.
All in iGEM Blog
I wasn’t supposed to be at the 2011 iGEM Jamboree at all. I was working for a funding agency in the US Department of Defense. My boss was invited to iGEM to see what the competition was about. I was pulled onto his trip at the last minute. After arriving in Boston, I was informed I would serve as a judge in my boss’s place. He didn’t stick around for the whole weekend. I am still a part of iGEM 11 years later.
This Friday (August 12) is International Youth Day, an opportunity “to celebrate and mainstream young peoples’ voices, actions and initiatives, as well as their meaningful, universal and equitable engagement.” On this day, we’d like to celebrate the 70,000+ young people that have participated in the iGEM Competition, engaging with their communities to solve local problems and tackle global challenges using the tools of synthetic biology.
As we prepare for the iGEM 2022 Grand Jamboree, I’d like to share with you the exciting developments that lie ahead on the road to Paris. In this post, the first of a series, I focus on the question: Why Paris?
Initially, team wikis were created using MediaWiki – a ground-breaking (at the time), open source, collaborative platform. But there have been tremendous advances in software development since then, most notably the creation of Git – a software developer’s dream.
From the moment the opening session of the conference began, what struck me was how similar the challenges are for emerging technologies across fields. Whether it is biotechnology, artificial intelligence, or smart cities, the same questions come up over and over again. In this post, I’d like to give an overview of three areas of overlap between synthetic biology and other emerging fields.
In this episode of the iGEMers of the World Podcast series, I talk with Kerstin Petroll, an entrepreneur and postdoctoral researcher in synthetic biology at Macquarie University, Australia. The iGEM startup that Kersten works with – HydGene Renewables – has engineered designer microbes that can produce hydrogen and renewable energy.
Antibiotic resistance - the most impactful silent pandemic of the century. It's astonishing to see how iGEM teams worked on different aspects of the problem in 2021, with some teams focused on detection of antibiotic resistance, while other teams developed new emerging technologies to kill the bacteria.
The iGEM Competition, as the name implies, is a competition. Presenting your work to a panel of judges at the end of the season is an integral part of the iGEM experience. This year, judging for the iGEM Competition will take place live during the Grand Jamboree at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Here is what to expect for judging of the iGEM 2022 Competition, for both judges AND teams.
One of the big challenges facing the field of synthetic biology is the ability to obtain reliable and repeatable measurements in different labs – a key component of all engineering disciplines. Over the past several years, iGEMers have been tackling this challenge through the International InterLaboratory (Interlab) Measurement Studies.
iGEM teams have an impressive record for creating new innovations to help manage risk and advance the field of synthetic biology. To encourage progress on this problem, iGEM’s Responsibility Program once again will award up to 5 grants of $5000 to teams working on technical advances in biosafety and biosecurity.
We invite you to launch your entrepreneurial journey with the iGEM EPIC Summer Bootcamp: a 3-day workshop that aims to train participants in the basics of entrepreneurship. This year’s EPIC Summer Bootcamp will be held on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of July from 14:00 to 16:00 UTC online on Zoom.
Last year, with the support of the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, we launched a first-of-its-kind initiative that provided grants to help 2021 iGEM teams take their projects further than ever before. Based on last year’s success, we are excited to continue this program for the 2022 season! Here are some examples from last year’s recipients of the iGEM 2021 Team Impact Grant.
Animals are used in research for many different purposes, including as models for the human body and as test subjects for food or medicine intended for animals. Unfortunately, one of the most common reasons that teams are disqualified from the iGEM Competition is for violations of our Animal Use Policy. The policy requires that teams get approval from the Safety & Security Committee before beginning experiments involving animals or animal samples.
Accessibility is key to iGEM’s new purpose of making sure that the field of synthetic biology, and all of the power that this technology holds, gets developed everywhere by everyone. In this episode of iGEM TV, I interview two special guests – Annika Shi from China and Cibele Zolnier from Brazil – both of whom are part of the iGEM Community’s Open Science & Accessibility Network. Check out this interview where we discuss some of the outstanding iGEM projects from the 2021 Jamboree that focused on accessibility.
Thank you to the hundreds of iGEMers, community members, and volunteers who joined last weekend's Opening Day Kickoff event! During the webinar, we covered an overview of this year's Competition requirements, and introduced many core concepts including engineering, safety and responsibility, and human practices. Keep reading for a summary of what was discussed, including links and presentation slides from the meeting.
There is nothing new about information (info) hazards. We are all familiar with the national security implications of information. Widespread knowledge of certain information can change our risk environment. For example, we keep the precise schedule of our leaders out of the public domain to make it harder for anyone planning them harm to be able to act on it. It is the knowledge of where they will be, when, and what steps we are talking to protect them that poses an information hazard.
Joining the iGEM Competition is no easy feat, and teams face countless obstacles as they progress through an iGEM season, whether that is troubleshooting in the lab, overcoming bugs in their wiki code, or interpersonal conflicts within the team itself. Even when faced with these issues, it is important to know that you are not alone in your struggles, and here in the iGEM Community, we have generated a number of different resources that will hopefully help to lessen the challenges you may be facing.
When James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and colleagues published their seminal work on the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, scientists were at a turning point in understanding how genetic material works. Now, just 70 years later, graduate, undergraduate, and even high school students apply their knowledge of how genetic material works to engineer biology itself; using it to address the world’s biggest problems such as climate change, biodiversity, human health, and more.
When you think of India, what comes to mind? Teams from India have a long history of participating in iGEM, known by most as the premier international synthetic biology competition, and the organization that helped to establish the synthetic biology industry. When you think of India, we invite you to think of local people solving local problems throughout every region of India using the tools of synthetic biology. That is the vision of iGEM Indian League.
What exactly is an “iGEM team”? Over the years, iGEM has evolved and expanded to accommodate new groups that want to participate, and to improve the iGEM experience by refining the kind and composition of teams, the roles of team members, and the sections in which the teams compete. We’ve put together some guidelines to help you understand the anatomy of an iGEM team.
