iGEM Calgary: Front Page News

The 40 mile County Commentator has published a brief story on iGEM Calgary that appeared on the front page of the latest issue. You can view it here.

Synthetic Biology Awareness

May 27, 2010. Upon Craig Venter's recent announcement that he has successfully inserted the synthetic genome of genitalia mycoplasma into an empty cell, the media has developed huge interest in the matter. This coincided with President Barack Obama's decision earlier to order a six month review of synthetic biology. The panel that is reviewing Obama's request include Venter and several of his synthetic biology colleagues including Jay Keasling and Drew Endy. House committee members lack knowledge regarding synthetic biology. However they were interested in the potential of synthetic biology such as in the areas of synthetic fuels or synthetic compounds. This article also mentions the selling point of this meeting as the commercialization of synthetic biology based on the vested interest of the panel.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/congress-obama-synthetic-bio/#more-21922

Jeremy

Drew Endy's DNA factory up and running

A project discussed for many years by many scientists, including MIT researcher and facility director Drew Endy, BIOFAB has now been up and running for the last 6 months. The (B+) International Open Facility for Advancing Biotechnology (BIOFAB), the world's first DNA factory, aims to offer scientists and students certain well-characterized pieces of DNA that can be assembled in different ways to carry out various functions. A real-world offshoot from the undergraduate iGEM competition, the BIOFAB is currently carrying out the characterization and standardization necessary to turn past iGEM projects into a true, world-wide synthetic biology registry. Read the full Nature News article, or check out the BIOFAB home page.

Dave

Directed Evolution

Evolution -- A process by which organisms become more suited to their environment. This occurs due to incorporation of random mutations in the genome which makes the particular organism "fitter". -- Darwin

Evolution is due to random mutations that occur in nature...or is it?

In 2009 University of Science and technology China iGEM team designed a system which allows directed evolution. This system allows the incorporation of a mutant gene and gets the desired product as the output. The system is designed such that that if the mutated gene gets expressed then the cell would live by suppressing ccdB and if the mutated gene does not get expressed then the cell would die as a result of ccdB production.

Fun fact: most of the registry reporters (fluorescent proteins such as RFP, GFP etc) are designed via directed evolution. This team just gave a new system which allows directed evolution.

For more information on the design of the system click here.

Himika

Synthetic Biology Matters to the President!

On July 8-9, 2010 Drew Endy and several of his colleagues were invited to the White House to discuss the ethical considerations of synthetic biology. This meeting was more for updating the Obama administration to the development and advances in the field of synthetic biology. The meeting is in response to Craig Venter's current insertion of synthetic genitalia mycoplasma genome. There are videos documenting their discussion here, and an official letter written by Barack Obama to Dr. Amy Gutmann inquiring about the potential effects of synthetically created genome.

Barack Obama's letter about synthetic biology can be found here. (PDF)

This will be covered in more detail soon!

Jeremy

iGEM Team Helps Prevent Rogue Use of Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology is a constantly developing field. New things are popping up every day. Here's an example, published yesterday in Science Centric:

A team of students from ENSIMAG, an engineering school in Grenoble, France, and Virginia Tech is using bioinformatics to implement federal guidance on synthetic genomics. The students' work will help gene synthesis companies and their customers better detect the possible use of manufactured DNA as harmful agents for bioterrorism.

Kudos to the VT-ENSIMAG_Biosecurity team! We wish you the best of luck.

Read the full article here.


Patrick

Welcome to the iGEM Calgary 2010 Blog!

Thanks for visiting! This is where we'll be keeping you guys updated on everything that the University of Calgary 2010 iGEM team is doing.

For those who are unfamiliar, iGEM stands for the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. This is an undergraduate-driven event, hosted by MIT, where teams from all over the world come together to show off their work in synthetic biology. As of 2010, there are 118 teams competing.

Synthetic biology is a rapidly expanding field that attempts to apply engineering principles to biology. One major part is the standardization of DNA pieces that can be reassembled like building blocks. Each team is given a starter set of "BioBricks" that can be used to solve many problems in biology.

This year, iGEM Calgary is attempting to build a "troubleshooting kit" for gene expression. Many researchers in biology face problems expression various genes into proteins (which do everything in a cell). We're trying to create a system that will show researchers precisely what is going wrong with their gene and where the problem is happening.

More details can be found on our team wiki at http://2010.igem.org/Team:Calgary, which can also be accessed by the link up on the very top.

Be sure to follow us on our RSS feed and also our Twitter at @iGEMCalgary!