Team:KULeuven/Project/Synthetic Biology

After reading DNA, let’s write DNA!
Since the discovery of the double helix in 1953, things have changed quickly in biosciences. The latest challenge is synthetic biology, in which new biological systems are built from standard, interchangeable parts. After 50 years of reading DNA, we can write it ourselves! Microbial landmine detectors, photographic bacteria, antimalarial drug producers,... Possibilities seem endless.

In the front line of the new biosciences buzz is the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM). Since 2004, the prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US organizes the iGEM competition for multidisciplinary teams of students. What started as a small extracurricular MIT course, has now grown into an international competition with more than 80 teams from all over the world. During the summer holiday, the teams build a "new genetic machine" in their home university, both with computer simulations and in the real lab. In November, all teams present their project at the 2-day jamboree at the MIT in Boston.

iGEM - Synthetic biology
Synthetic biology is a new challenge in biosciences. It combines biology and engineering principles to design and build new biological functions and systems. Examples are abound: cancer cell invading bacteria(1), microbes that take pictures(2), antimalarial drug producers(3), ... The advantage of using living systems for these purposes is that, once they are designed and built, they are self-reproducible. The challenge, however lies exactly within the design and construction: making biological circuits and devices as robust and predictive as their electrical counterparts. Creating foundation technologies for engineering biology is the major goal of one of the founders of the iGEM competition, Drew Endy (who made a great comic on synthetic biology !)

Indeed, although synthetic biology may sound as old wine in new bottles, it is clearly different from the genetic engineering we know so far. Whereas recombinant DNA technology is applied ad hoc and hardly ever predictable, synthetic biology builds on standardization and abstraction. You first design what you want to make, you test it to see if it will do what you want it to do, and then you build it, for instance with standardized BioBricks. The underlying goal of synthetic biology is to make it easier to engineer biology. And since biology is that complex, the only way to see if biological systems can be truly engineered, is to try it out. Hence the iGEM competion!

iGEM - Competition
The international Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) or iGEM competition is a synthetic biology competition for multidisciplinary teams of undergraduate students. It was first organized in 2004 by Drew Endy, Randy Rettberg and Tom Knight of MIT with two goals in mind: to yield new ideas in synthetic biology and to form the future researchers in this new scientific community. Whereas 5 US teams competed in 2004, the 2007 edition already had 750 students and advisors grouped in 54 teams from 19 countries. This year, the competition already counts 83 teams!

The core of the iGEM competition is to design and build a “new genetic machine” with BioBricks. BioBricks are standardized, off the shelf biological parts that are used by genetic network designers. All BioBricks that were made during previous iGEM competitions are registered and documented in the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Each iGEM competition thus starts from the efforts of the previous years.

The main iGEM activity happens during the summer holidays, when all teams build their "new genetic machine" in their home university. These new biological systems are first carefully designed with computer simulations. Then they are built in the real lab by using existing BioBricks and creating new ones. During the 2-day jamboree at the MIT in Boston on November 8th and 9th, all teams present and defend their project for a variety of awards.

During the competition, every team documents their project in a wiki, as another goal of iGEM is to promote the sharing of information and know-how in an "open source biology". Likewise, the newly created BioBricks are documented and sent to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts a few weeks before the jamboree.

footnotes:

1. Anderson et al. (2006) Environmentally controlled invasion of cancer cells by engineered bacteria. J Mol Biol. 355:619-627

2. Levskaya et al. (2005) Synthetic biology: engineering Escherichia coli to see light. Nature 438:441-442

3. Martin et al. (2003) Engineering a mevalonate pathway in Escherichia coli for production of terpenoids. Nat Biotechnol 21:796-802