Undergraduates from 59 countries are gathering at MIT for the 2007 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, or iGEM Jamboree, to showcase the designer biological systems they have spent all summer building.
These are the up-and-coming practitioners of the hot new field of synthetic biology displaying their finest work.
Using DNA building blocks from MIT’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts (think DNA lego library), the students have designed and constructed an array of biological devices with utilitarian value.
Rice University has built a virus that instills antibiotic-sensitive bacteria with a competitive edge against antibiotic-resistant bacteria; the goal is to get the good bacteria to out-compete the bad. This would be nice given that over 70 percent of bacteria causing infections in hospitals are resistant to at least one of the antibiotics commonly used to treat them.
A team from the Imperial College London has created a device that fluoresces green when it detects bacteria in urinary catheters, alerting health care workers to disinfect catheters and thereby prevent urinary tract infections in patients—another useful technology, given that urinary tract infections are the most common type of health care-associated infection.
And the University of Alberta team, the so-called “Buta-nerds,” have been working on bacteria that crank out butanol fuel, a potential replacement for petroleum gasoline. According to the Buta-nerds, butanol is superior to ethanol "because it has low vapor pressure, high energy density, and a gasoline-like octane rating, it can be blended into existing gasoline at much higher proportions than ethanol without compromising performance, mileage, organic pollution standards."
Last year a team 8 students from Slovenia took home the grand prize—a big aluminum lego called the BioBrick—for engineering cells that interfere with the immune system’s overreaction to certain types of infections that can lead to life-threatening sepsis.
The winner of this year’s competition will be announced this Sunday.
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