iGEM 2019: 15 more reasons Canada is moving mountains in synthetic biology!
Kenza Samlali - December 12, 2019
iGEM 2019 Judging Panel. (Picture: iGEM Foundation, Justin Knight)
How many biology degrees offer students an opportunity to collaborate with other disciplines, or design and perform lab group work at all? I know that during my undergrad I never had the chance to design my own experiments, let alone collaborate with students from other faculties. This is traditionally reserved for your Masters thesis or PhD work.
But what happens if you build a support network for (under)graduate students from all over the world who wish to do so? The field of synthetic biology seems to be the ideal testing ground for such an activity, covering engineering principles, characterization, standardization, safety and human practices.
Luckily, I’m about 16 years late with this idea, and the reason why synthetic biology is built on these elements, is partially thanks to groups of students taking part in iGEM. Since its inception in 2003, the iGEM organization (international genetically engineered machine), has played an important role in the education and structure of the field of synthetic biology, turning the focus on multidisciplinarity and engineering principles to address critical problems in our community with synthetic biology. With a yearly competition - the international genetically engineered machines (iGEM) competition - iGEM stimulates hundreds of (under)graduate and high school students worldwide to complement their education with a self chosen self-directed project.
The importance of iGEM in the field of synthetic biology can’t be understated. The freedom an iGEM project hands to undergraduate students leads them to learn design thinking strategies, fundraising, marketing, hardware and software design, communication skills and long-term planning. The methods of teaching and training promoted by iGEM, in the shape of a fully student-run multidisciplinary project, develop sharp minded students with soft skills a traditional scientific education would never offer them. Many companies originated from iGEM projects, and the ‘AfteriGEM’ network has been able to send ex-iGEMers to important international conferences where the iGEM community is invited, being experts in the field.
Calgary’s excitement after the announcement of their finalist prize. (Picture: iGEM Foundation, Justin Knight)
This year, 14 Canadian collegiate teams and 1 Canadian high school team were accepted to participate in the iGEM Giant Jamboree at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, a gathering of teams from all over the world marking the end of the yearly competition. From October 31st to November 3rd, the teams presented their work to fellow iGEMers and an expert judging panel. Again, this year I had the pleasure to be part of this judging panel. In total, nine Gold medals, two silver medals, two bronze medals, 4 awards and numerous additional nominations were awarded to the Canadian teams. This is also the first time in history a Canadian team is a finalist - Calgary being first runner up in the undergraduate division. Canada has never performed this well at a Jamboree!
Our Canadian iGEM projects are mostly self-funded, and completely extra-curricular, with passionate students who clearly want more than sitting behind their desks. Something is happening and students can’t sit still anymore. We want to build, invent, run companies, collaborate, and be believed in. This is what iGEM has given our students, from fifteen Canadian institutions. Canadian students want to shake up the way they learn, leaving an impact on our communities. I’m extremely excited thinking about how far this generation will move the field of SynBio, with a little bit of flexibility and increasing support from our education system.
Congrats to all teams!
UBC students explaining their project to a judge during poster sessions. (Picture: iGEM Foundation, Justin Knight)
Award Summary
1 Finalist
9 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze medals
Best Food and Nutrition Project, Best New Application, Best Software Tool, Best Integrated Human Practices Undergraduate
Teams Overview
Medal: Gold
Project: UBC developed a method to prevent paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) - a neurotoxic illness that has devastated coastal indigenous families that rely on seafood as a main diet.
Calgary during their final presentation on stage - (Picture: iGEM Foundation, Justin Knight)
Project: Flip recombinase activity is binary and thus cannot be precisely activated in time and space. Utilizing light-sensitive protein interaction domains termed “magnets”, the Brock University iGEM team has developed a light-sensitive optogenetic variant of Flip recombinase that can be controlled in Escherichia coli with exquisite spatiotemporal precision.
Finalist, first runner up, Undergraduate
Awards: Best Food and Nutrition Project, Best Software Tool, Best Integrated Human Practices Undergraduate
Award Nominations: Best New Basic Part, Best, New Part Collection, Best Model, Best Poster, Best Presentation, Best Supporting Entrepreneurship, Best Wiki
Medal: Gold
Project: Calgary addressed the green seed problem - a big problem in the Canola oil industry. Green canola seeds causes financial harm to farmers and oil producers. The team tackled several parts of the Canola oil manufacturing pipeline: improving seed production with a weather predicting program, improving grading practices with hardware to calculate seed grade, produced 6GIX enzymes for extraction of chlorophyll and designed improved variants, and designed several enzymes to convert chlorophyll into an anti-fungal peptide.
Awards Nomination: Best Presentation
Medal: Gold
Project: The Concordia team set their eye on Fentanyl, an opioid painkiller, and the leading cause of accidental opioid overdose as many recreational drugs users are unaware that their drugs are laced with it. Quantifen, as the Concordia team calls it, is a non-invasive wearable biosensor based on a yeast biosensor, for the detection of fentanyl in sweat.
Medal: Gold
Project: Team Guelph University developed an antibiotic biosensor as to measure Tetracycline in animal products, to tackle the problem of antibiotic use in the livestock industry. E. coli was used as a model organism, turning pink upon the detection of tetracyclin.
Medal: Gold
Project: Lethbridge tackled a problem the pharmaceutical industry has dealt with for a long time: oral delivery of insulin. By using a microalgae called C. merolae, the team was able to solve this problem. By engineer an insulin metaboilic pathway in it, these acid pH resistant algae can now be ingested.
Students of Lethbridge High school explaining their project. (Picture: iGEM Foundation, Justin Knight)
Medal: Silver
Project: Canada’s only high school team decided to use CRISPR to build a diagnostic system that could identify pathogens and provide accurate antibiotic treatments, thus decreasing the misdiagnosis and spread of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains.
Project: Northern British Columbia team is the second team this year that decided to chose to address the opioid crisis. They built an opioid biosensor in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that can be used to test non-opioid recreational drugs for opioid contamination prior to consumption.
Awards Nomination: Best Diagnostics Project
Medal: Gold
Project: The Queens team designed a novel portable immunoassay to detect tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the active ingredient in marijuana. They used recombinantly expressed antibody fragments, which are conjugated to fluorescent molecules.
Awards Nomination: Best Manufacturing Project
Medal: Gold
Project: Toronto designed circularised PETase enzymes for PET hydrolysis into environmentally-harmless terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG) outside the cell. They additionally developed new methods to generate thermostable PETasemutants.
Medal: Bronze
Project: The UAlberta iGEM team created a portable detection system to replace the current time consuming detection method of Nosema ceranae disease in honey bees. They did so by designing a system comprised of M13 phage labelled with a chromoprotein and displaying a ligand specific to N. ceranae spores. Based on the colour intensity of the diagnostic paper strip, the severity of the hive infection can be assessed, thus democratizing diagnosis and facilitating effective treatment of N. ceranae.
Awards: Best New Application
Award Nomination: Best Model
Medal: Gold
Project: Team ULaval created a device, called A.D.N. (Airborne Detector for Nucleic acids, DNA in French) to rapidly detect small concentrations of airborne pathogens. The device relies on a novel microfluidics-based DNA extraction method, and detection of target DNA sequences by molecular sensors.
Medal: Gold
Project: The University of Ottawa team wished to tackle the obstacles of the lack of expertise and financial constraints many iGEM teams have. They have produced easy-to-read and video protocols, and multiple BioBrick library that offer compatibility with E.coli and yeast, or Golden Gate assembly.
Medal: Silver
Project: The Waterloo team engineered rhizospheric soil bacteria Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens USDA110 to have the ability to form root nodules with soybeans in the presence of the herbicide linuron. Usually, herbicides have a negative effect on rhizobia, which offer nitrogen delivery to most farmed plants, reducing the need for fertilizers.
Medal: Bronze
Project: At Western, students developed a versatile platform for the degradation of a wide range of emerging contaminants consistently found in wastewater. They did this using a self-assembling catalytic bacterial biofilm capable of degrading these contaminants.
Check out last year’s Canadian team’s performance in our blog post here.