iGEM

The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) is the largest synthetic biology competition in the world. The competition started in 2004 with 5 teams and has now grown to more than 400 teams from different universities attending every year.

University teams compete in either under- or over-graduate competitions in several different categories/villages, including Bioremediation, Agriculture, Climate Crisis, Fashion & Cosmetics, Food & Nutrition, Diagnostics, Therapeutics, Biomanufacturing, Foundational Advance, Software & AI, and Space.

Every project has to contain synthetic biology and should aim at solving a problem in the community either locally or globally, or even develop new tools for research. The teams have to document all their findings on a Wiki-page to ensure transparency and knowledge sharing.

In early November the team goes to Paris and meets up with similar teams from the best universities in the world to present their work and compete in the iGEM competition. The projects are evaluated by a judging committee consisting of professors and industry leaders from around the world.

DTU BioBuilders participated in iGEM for the first time in 2009 (see the 2009 team page).

Biobricks

An essential part of the iGEM competition is that each team must submit at least one BioBrick to the publicly available BioBrick library.

Outreach

Another important part of the iGEM competition is outreach, promoting the teams to spread the word of synthetic biology in the community and introduce the possible implications their project could have for society. Examples could be engagement with policy makers or sharing the potential of synthetic biology by presenting the project to high-school students.