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Revision as of 17:07, 23 October 2011
Ready for take-off !By the Team
We are proud to say we obtained our pass for the iGEM World Championship at the MIT (Boston) and got a gold medal ! We will double our efforts to acomplish our goals until Boston in early November. Many thanks to all our supports.
Mercuro-Coli: A new way to quantify heavy metals.
Our project aims at constructing an easy to use, transportable sensor capable of quantifying the concentration of mercury, in an aqueous sample.
Our system is based on a comparison between an unknown mercury concentration and a known IPTG concentration. A linear IPTG gradient is present on a test-strip containing the engineered bacteria. When the mercury solution is added, the regulatory network will switch to one of two states depending on the IPTG/mercury ratio.
Bacteria become either“sender” or “receiver”. The bacteria sensing a predominance of mercury over IPTG, the “senders”, will release a quorum sensing molecule which is detected by the nearby “receivers”. The reception of quorum sensing molecules will induce the expression of a red dye in the “receivers”. In this way, a red line emerges at a position in the IPTG gradient from which the unknown mercury concentration can be deduced.
iGEM and the future of synthetic biologyBy Geoffrey
Now booming, synthetic biology is a scientific field that divides the world into 2 parts. On the one hand, people who believe it will science and our life. On the over hand, people who believe that synthetic biology is dangerous and it simply means playing God.
Like all new domains of science, many questions may be raised about synthetic biology. Albert Einstein said: “It is strange that science which before seemed to be inoffensive will be turned into a nightmare that frightens everyone”. The goal of iGEM competition is to promote synthetic biology in the scientific community, but also to inform the public about this new science. Synthetic biology is a very controlled science to prevent side-effects and many countries such as France move to a strong legislative supervision in order to respect the ethical issues related to the modification of life.
According to the newsletter of the French Embassy to the United States, the international scientific community recognizes the dangers of synthetic biology and it must identify them precisely. It has especially given to the competition iGEM an important educational role for the scientific community of tomorrow.
However, synthetic biology is a science with an extraordinary potential. Technological advances it could bring are huge. The fields of application are vast, from agriculture to medicine through the environment and energy, synthetic biology offers new possibilities and new alternatives to current technologies. The iGEM competition directly contributes to advance research in all these fields by enabling student teams to contribute in these categories.
"Open source" policy conveyed by iGEM allows the world to take advantage of advances in this field and thus to improve every year the level of competition and projects. And we can say that the objective is on track, because the number of teams participating in this competition is constantly increasing.
A great human adventure
iGEM competition includes about 160 teams (more or less 2000 students) over the world. There will be a first regional jamboree in different regions such as Europe, Asia, America,… and then a third of us will go to Boston for the last jamboree. This will be the first opportunities for most of students to meet people from so many universities at once ! We ‘ll be hosting at the same places, sharing breakfast and even partying together !... We ‘ll be able to discuss abouts many topics related to our fields, share ideas, and to see how others managed their work by watching their presentations.
iGEM competition is not just about doing scientific work in order to get a medal, but is also about doing all of what an engineer or researcher needs to do ! Each team needs to set up contacts and collaboration with other groups. Sharing bricks or helping others is a criteria for winning a gold medal! We also need to get funds in order to finance our work…. So we must make a project that fits some challenge of our society ! As every one knows, new technologies rise up new ethical issues. This aspect has to be considered on every single project !
Now that we have found an interesting project and can be useful for the society, we are on the way for 4 month of intense work ! Our group is made of 12 people with very different education , that have to understand and synchronise each other. Since we are spread out in multiple places, we already meet once a week in order to coordinate or work. This need of an efficient communication within the team is an exiting part of the project !
