Project Inspiration

2024 witnessed a number of space happenings – from meteor showers, supermoons and the heightened visibility of the aurora borealis, to colossal rocket launches, planetary missions, the first commercial spacewalk and the first sample return from the lunar far side. Yet, among the most exciting space happenings were the accomplishments of the iGEM Space Initiative. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all over the news, and it's making waves in synthetic biology too. At iGEM, teams are leveraging AI as they push the boundaries of synthetic biology to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. To give you some background and perspective on how past iGEM teams have incorporated AI in their work, check out these projects.

Imagine a future where most cancers are prevented or even cured, where there is universal access to early detection and treatment, and where most (all?) cancer patients can expect to live cancer-free without trading the quality of life for length of life. At iGEM, teams are working to create such a future using the tools of synthetic biology. Check out these examples.

Due to their inherent safety, simplicity and portability , cell-free systems have become an increasingly important tool in iGEM and synthetic biology more broadly.

Our world has entered a new era of infectious diseases, where emerging, re-emerging, and endemic pathogens spread quickly, aided by increased international air travel and global warming. At iGEM, teams are tackling infectious diseases by using the tools of synthetic biology to reduce disease transmission, prevent future epidemics and pandemics, and save lives.

The future of the fashion and cosmetics industries may well lie in the hands of the future leaders of synthetic biology. These consumer-driven industries touch the lives of almost everyone on earth, but they also use massive amounts of raw materials and have an immense negative impact on the environment. At iGEM, teams are using synthetic biology to help move the fashion and cosmetics industries into a new, more sustainable, and animal cruelty-free era. Here are just a few examples of iGEM team projects that could usher in the next revolution in fashion and cosmetics.

Rare Disease Day is observed on the last day of February to raise awareness about rare diseases and improve access to treatment and medical representation. This article covers the barriers in therapy progress, communication and how are iGEM teams tackling rare diseases with synthetic biology

Take a looking how iGEM Teams from around the world are restoring Earth's health applying the tools and techniques of synthetic biology for Bioremediation.

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.

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.

Neurodegenerative diseases comprise a broad spectrum of disorders resulting from the gradual deterioration of cells and connections within the nervous system, crucial for functions such as movement, coordination, strength, sensation, and cognition. Explore how iGEM team’s have tackled the disease through their innovative diagnostic and therapeutic solutions.

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.

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. 

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. 

Ever since I worked on the Astroshield project with my teammates on the Sao_Carlos-Brazil 2019 iGEM team, I’ve been fascinated with how synthetic biology applied to space exploration can yield important insights for making life better here on Earth.

The iGEM 2022 teams have done amazing work in translating their projects into commercially viable products and services that could change the lives of many people by improving health, or combatting climate change, or addressing many other important, urgent world problems.

Tomorrow (November 10) is World Science Day for Peace and Development, a day established by the United Nations to recognize the importance of science in society and the need to inform the public about the relevance of science in their lives and to engage them in discussions on emerging scientific issues. In honor of World Science Day for Peace and Development, we’d like to highlight the nominees and winners of the Best Sustainable Development Impact award in the 2022 iGEM Competition.

In 2012, George Church, Yuan Gao, and Sriram Kosuri published their work “Next Generation Digital Information Storage” in the journal Science. Using DNA's four-letter nucleotide code of A, G, T, and C to encode the 0s and 1s of a digitized file, they were the first to demonstrate that DNA could be used as a storage medium. Fast forward to today, and you’ll see numerous developments in reading and writing different forms of data on DNA to make DNA storage more efficient and cost effective.

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.

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.

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.

World TB Day is March 24, which marks the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced his discovery of the bacterium that causes TB – Mycobacterium tuberculosis – opening the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease. Despite being preventable and treatable, TB is still one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, second only to COVID-19 in 2020. This year the theme of World TB Day is “Invest to End TB. Save Lives”, reflecting the urgency to invest resources to end the global TB epidemic by 2030.

This Friday – March 4 – is World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, a United Nations’ international day for celebrating engineers and engineering. It’s a day to recognize the critical role of engineers in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure that everyone has access to clean water, sanitation, reliable energy, and other basic human needs. In honor of World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, we’d like to highlight the accomplishments of iGEM teams in engineering biological solutions towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Every year, hundreds of fascinating projects are developed by iGEMers to face the pressing challenges of our time and innovate for the future. I invite you to check out my interview with Maarten Lubbers as we discuss projects from the iGEM 2021 season that focus on biodiversity conservation. These are very different projects using very different approaches by iGEM teams from different continents around the globe.

Last year, we introduced the Inclusivity Award to recognize excellence among iGEM teams working to create a more inclusive and representative scientific community. This special award honors teams that have made exceptional and thoughtful efforts to eliminate the barriers that prevent underrepresented groups from contributing to, participating in, or being represented by scientific research.