For the second year in a row, Northwestern’s International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) team advanced to the World Championship Jamboree after winning a gold medal at the regional competition.
The Jamboree, an international competition held Nov. 2 through 5 in Cambridge, Mass., involves undergraduate student teams building biological systems over the summer from a kit of biological parts.
NU advanced to the international competition after securing a gold medal in the American East region in mid-October. A total of 190 teams registered for iGEM 2012, and 72 teams advanced to the world championship.
This year, NU’s team focused on iron deficiency anaemia, one of the three main nutrient deficiency disorders listed by the World Health Organization.
NU’s iGEM team attempted to create a probiotic yogurt for breaking down digestive acids, which would release iron stores into the body. The group tried to create a low-cost solution to help prevent iron deficiencies with the intent of distributing the yogurt to people in developing countries.
“The key to iGEM is showing that compared with other alternatives, biological system is the best solution to the problem you work on,” said McCormick Prof. Joshua Leonard, advisor of NU’s iGEM team. “The existing method for iron deficiency is expensive and hard to distribute, so we try to produce an inexpensive, self-sustaining biological approach which can be popularized on a large scale.”
The international competition was founded in 2009, and NU’s iGEM team has competed every year since 2010. NU’s team was awarded gold medals at the 2011 and 2012 competitions and advanced to the Jamboree in both years. Last year, the team won Best Model for the 2011 American regional jamboree.
The team started this year’s project last spring quarter, when they began brainstorming ideas, Weinberg sophomore Lajja Patel said. After receiving their competition kit at the end of June, students worked on the project from mid-July through October, she said. The team met with advisers regularly for feedback on the feasibility of the project and potential challenges.
“The biggest challenge for us probably is time,” Patel said. “We had not finalized our idea until mid-July, which is pretty late.”
Hartman said the team did not place at the international level because its project ultimately did not get the intended results. The group would have been more successful if it could have tested the solution on sample groups, she said.
In addition to Patel and Hartman, NU’s team this year consists of McCormick junior Mike Kenton, McCormick sophomore Grant Nicholas, McCormick sophomore Brian Tang, Weinberg senior Tae Seong and Weinberg junior Yuan Tao.
Leonard said advisors try to make the team interdisciplinary, with a balance between engineering and science. He said one unique aspect of NU’s team is the incorporation of quantitative modeling into the project, completed by students with an engineering background. Students majoring in biology have a richer understanding of biological systems and can more easily identify the opportunity at the early stage, he said.
