International Genetically Engineered Machine

International Genetically Engineered Machine
Date(s) November 09 – November 13, 2017
Frequency Annually
Location(s) Boston, Massachusetts, United States
With additional events worldwide
Inaugurated 2003
Most recent 2017
Website www.igem.org
iGEM 2006 from above.

The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition is a worldwide synthetic biology competition that was initially aimed at undergraduate university students, but has since expanded to include divisions for high school students, entrepreneurs, and community laboratories, as well as 'overgraduates'.

Competition details

Student teams are given a kit (so called ‘Distribution Kit’) of standard, interchangeable parts (so called 'BioBricks') at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts comprising various genetic components such as promoters, terminators, reporter elements, and plasmid backbones. Working at their local laboratories over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells.
The teams are free to choose a project, which can build on previous projects or be new to iGEM. Successful projects produce cells that exhibit new and unusual properties by engineering sets of multiple genes together with mechanisms to regulate their expression.
At the end of the summer the teams add their new BioBricks to the Parts Registry and the scientific community can build upon the expanded set of BioBricks in the next year.
At the annual ‘iGEM Jamboree’ teams from all continents meet in Boston for a scientific conference where they present their projects to each other and to a scientific jury of ~120 judges. The judges are awarding medals, special prizes to the teams and select a ‘Grand Prize Winner’ team as well as ‘Runner-Up’ teams in each division (High School, Undergraduate and Overgraduate).

Awards & Judging in the iGEM competition

Each participant receives a participating certificate (see fig. below) and has the possibility to earn medals (bronze, silver and gold; see fig. below) with their team depending on different criteria that the team fulfilled in the competitions. For a bronze medal it is for example necessary to submit a new part to the Parts Registry, for a silver medal the team is required to document the functionality of a part and for a gold medal it is finally, among other criteria, necessary to obtain a proof-of-principle for the team's project.
In 2016 as an example, 300 teams participated in the competition from which 37% received a gold medal, 25% a silver medal, 26% a bronze medal and 12% were not awarded a medal.

In each division the best performance in a certain aspect of the competition is honored with special prizes. The special prizes include: 'Best Project' in the respective categories (app. 10 categories), 'Best Art & Design', 'Best Hardware', 'Best Measurement', 'Best Software', 'Best Human Practices', 'Best Model', 'Best New Part', 'Best Poster', 'Best Presentation', 'Best Wiki' and others depending on the competition year. Together with individual certificates the teams are given glass trophies for each special prize (see fig. below).

From all teams in a respective division a number of finalists is selected (1 to 6, depending on year and division) that are allowed to present their project again in front of all Jamboree participants. From the presented projects all judges select the winner of this year's iGEM competitions, the Grand Prize Winner-team that is awarded a big metal Lego-brick (see fig. below). The winning team may keep this challenge trophy for a year until it gets awarded to the next 'Grand Prize Winner'. Participants of a 'Grand Prize Winner'-team are also given challenge coins of the respective year (see fig. below).

History of the competition

Growth of the annual iGEM Jamboree[1]
Year No. of participants
2004
31(5 teams)
2005
125(13 teams)
2006
723(32 teams)
2007
777(54 teams)
2008
1,248(88 teams)
2009
1,840(113 teams)
2010
2,327(128 teams)
2011
2,586(165 teams)
2012
3,696(190 teams)
2013
4,027(215 teams)
2014
4,515(245 teams)
2015
5,018(280 teams)
2016
4,432(300 teams)
2017
5,400(310 teams)

iGEM developed out of student projects conducted during MIT's Independent Activities Periods in 2003 and 2004.[2][3] Later in 2004, a competition with five teams from various schools was held. In 2005, teams from outside the United States took part for the first time.[4] Since then iGEM has continued to grow, with 130 teams entering in 2010.[5] Randy Rettberg, an engineer who has worked for technology companies including Apple, Sun and BBN,[6] is the founder and director of the iGEM competition.

Because of this increasing size, in the years 2011 - 2013 the competition was split into three regions: Europe, the Americas, and Asia (though teams from Africa and Australia also entered via "Europe" and "Asia" respectively).[7] Regional jamborees occurred during October; and some subset of teams attending those events were selected to advance to the World Championship at MIT in November.[8]

In January 2012 the iGEM Foundation was spun out of MIT as an independent non-profit organization located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The iGEM Foundation supports scientific research and education through operating the iGEM competition. The same year, iGEM expanded into having not only the Collegiate division, but also competitions for entrepreneurs and high school students.

For their tenth anniversary iGEM added new tracks to the existing ones: Art & Design, Community Labs, Entrepreneurship, Measurement, Microfluidics, Policy & Practice, and Software. Although Entrepreneurship and Software were tracks in previous years, in 2014 they were made more distinct in terms of their judging requirements.[9] Furthermore, in 2014 iGEM did not have regional jamborees, but instead hosted a giant jamboree so every team could participate in one conference in Cambridge unlike in previous years where only the regional finalists were brought to Cambridge.[10]

Broader goals

Beyond just building biological systems, broader goals of iGEM include:

  • To enable the systematic engineering of biology.
  • To promote the open and transparent development of tools for engineering biology.
  • And to help construct a society that can productively and safely[11] apply biological technology.

iGEM's dual aspects of self-organization and imaginative manipulation of genetic material have demonstrated a new way to arouse student interest in modern biology and to develop their independent learning skills.

Competition results

High School Division

Top High School Teams by Year
Grand Prize 2nd 3rd Complete Results
2017 TAS Taipei Chinese Taipei iGEM 2017
2016 HSiTAIWAN Chinese Taipei iGEM 2016
2015 TAS Taipei Chinese Taipei iGEM HS 2015
2014 CSIA-SouthKorea South Korea TP CC-SanDiego United States[note 1] TAS TaipeiChinese Taipei iGEM HS 2014
2013 Lethbridge Canada Canada AUC Turkey Turkey CIDEB-UANL Mexico Mexico iGEM HS 2013
2012 Heidelberg LSL Germany NC School of Sci Math United States CIDEB-UANL Mexico Mexico iGEM HS 2012
2011 Years prior to 2012 had no separate high school division.

Undergraduate Division

Top Undergraduate Teams by Year
Grand Prize 2nd 3rd Complete Results
2017 Vilnius-Lithuania Lithuania William and Mary United States Heidelberg Germany iGEM 2017
2016 Imperial United Kingdom Sydney Australia Australia SCAU-China China iGEM 2016
2015 William and Mary United States Czech Republic Czech Republic Heidelberg Germany iGEM 2015
2014 Heidelberg Germany Imperial United Kingdom NCTU Formosa Chinese Taipei iGEM 2014
2013 Heidelberg Germany TU Munich Germany Imperial United Kingdom iGEM 2013[note 2]
2012 Groningen Netherlands Ljubljana Slovenia Paris Bettencourt France[note 3] LMU Munich Germany iGEM 2012
2011 Washington United States Imperial United Kingdom ZJU China China MIT United States iGEM 2011 [note 4]
2010 Ljubljana Slovenia Peking China BCCS Bristol United Kingdom Cambridge United Kingdom Imperial United Kingdom TU Delft Netherlands iGEM 2010
2009 Cambridge United Kingdom Heidelberg Germany Valencia Spain Freiburg Germany Groningen Netherlands Imperial United Kingdom iGEM 2009
2008 Ljubljana Slovenia Freiburg Germany Caltech United States Harvard United States NYMU Taipei Chinese Taipei UC Berkeley United States iGEM 2008
2007 Peking China Paris France Ljubljana Slovenia UC Berkeley United States UCSF United States USTC China iGEM 2007 [note 5]
2006 Ljubljana Slovenia Imperial United Kingdom Princeton United States iGEM 2006
2005 Years prior to 2006 had no specific winners. iGEM 2005
2004 IAP 2004, SBC 2004
2003 IAP 2003

Overgraduate Division

Top Overgraduate Teams by Year
Grand Prize 2nd 3rd Complete Results
2017 TU Delft Netherlands Munich Germany[note 6] iGEM 2017
2016 LMU & TU Munich Germany[note 7] Wageningen UR Netherlands iGEM 2016
2015 TU Delft Netherlands BGU Israel Israel iGEM 2015
2014 UC Davis United States Wageningen Netherlands TU Darmstadt Germany iGEM 2014
2013 Paris Bettencourt France Bielefeld Germany Sun Yat-sen China iGEM 2013[note 8]
2012 Years prior to 2013 had no separate overgraduate division.

Notes

  1. ↑ Combined team from Torrey Pines High School and Canyon Crest Academy.
  2. ↑ In 2013 iGEM was divided into an undergraduate and an overgraduate section. The criterium for division was the participance of team members older than 23 years.
  3. ↑ Students were from different universities of Paris (Paris Descartes University, Paris Diderot University, Pierre and Marie Curie University).
  4. ↑ As of June 2012, the 2011 results page does not include results from the Championship Jamboree; but details can be found at the Jamboree page.
  5. ↑ 2007 had six finalists but none were selected as specific runners-up.
  6. ↑ Combined team from Technische Universität München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
  7. ↑ Combined team from Technische Universität München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
  8. ↑ In 2013 iGEM was divided into an undergraduate and an overgraduate section. The criterium for division was the participance of team members older than 23 years.

References

  1. ↑ "Previous iGEM Competitions". igem.org. Retrieved 2017-08-04.
  2. ↑ "Learn about iGEM". Retrieved 2013-05-06.
  3. ↑ Trafton, Anne. "Rewiring Cells". Technology Review.
  4. ↑ "iGEM 2005". Retrieved 2013-05-06.
  5. ↑ "Previous iGEM Competitions". iGEM. Retrieved 2011-11-12.
  6. ↑ "The Bleeding Edge" (PDF). IEEE. Retrieved 2010-03-17.
  7. ↑ "Team List 2011". iGEM. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
  8. ↑ "Jamborees". iGEM. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
  9. ↑ "Tracks 2014". iGEM. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  10. ↑ "Giant Jamboree". iGEM. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  11. ↑ "Biosafety Considerations of Synthetic Biology in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition". BioScience. 63: 25. 2013. doi:10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.7.

Further reading

  • Mooallem, Jon (2010-02-14). "Do-It-Yourself Genetic Engineering". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-04.
  • "A Life of Its Own: Where will synthetic biology lead us?". New Yorker. 2009-09-28. Retrieved 2010-05-04.
  • "iGEM Team Funding". Wellcome Trust. Archived from the original on December 2, 2010. Retrieved 2010-12-03.
  • "Biosafety Considerations of Synthetic Biology in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition". BioScience. 63: 25. 2013. doi:10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.7.
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