iGEM international Genetically Engineered Machine Competition

1
iGEM international Genetically Engineered
Machine Competition
Ben Althouse and Pete Morcos

• About the Competition
• iGEM is an undergraduate Synthetic Biology
  competition. Student teams are given a kit of
  biological parts at the beginning of the summer.
  Working at their own schools over the summer,
  they use these parts and new parts of their own
  design to build biological systems and operate
  them in living cells. During the first weekend of
  November, they present their work at the iGEM
  Competition Jamboree at MIT and have a chance to
  win prizes. They add their new parts to the
  Registry of Standard Biological Parts for the
  students in the next year's competition. 1
• In 2006, 400 students from 38 schools (not the
  UW) in 14 nations competed with diverse projects
  such as
• Bacterial Conjugation (UC Berkeley)
• Bacterial Freeze Tag (Brown)
• Nanostructures for stealth drug delivery
  (Harvard)
• Redesigning e. coli odor (MIT)
• E. Coli Tic-Tac-Toe (Tokyo)
• The grand prize winners of 2006 were the team
  from Slovenia who designed a negative feedback
  loop to control the immunoresponse to bacterial
  infection, keeping the host from developing
  sepsis.
• 2007 will be the 4th year of the iGEM
  competition over 80 teams are expected. Teams
  will be required to be primarily undergraduate,
  although others are welcome as advisors.
  Registration starts in April!

Duke used e. coli as biomarkers in this rat as a
means to transport and display information. 4
Harvards nanobox for drug delivery. 2
Calgarys swarm bioluminescence 5
Tokyos AND-AND logic gates repressor-repressor
(top) and activator-repressor (bottom). 3
References 1 http//parts.mit.edu/r/parts/igem/i
ndex.cgi 2 http//openwetware.org/wiki/IGEMHarv
ard/2006/Container_Design_5 3
http//parts2.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/Tokyo_Allianc
e_Design/Method 4 http//igem.bme.duke.edu/he.h
tml 5 http//galapagos.cpsc.ucalgary.ca16080/w
iki/igemwiki/index.php/Main_Page
EE 546 BioCircuits! Spring 2007