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Next stop Boston

Freiburg student team is European championship 1st runner-up of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Synthetic Biology.

Freiburg student team is European championship 1st runner-up of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Synthetic Biology

A tool to regulate genes: The iGEM team of the University of Freiburg came second with its project “uniCAS” at the European championship of the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM). iGEM is the biggest international research competition for students in the fields of Synthetic Biology with over 200 teams participants every year.  In addition to their success as 1st runner-up, the 21 students from Freiburg were awarded for constructing the best “New Engineered BioBrick”, a biological component of their system, as well as for the best team picture.

With these outstanding results they qualified for the World championship, which will take place the 1st to the 4th of November at the Massachusetts institute of Technology in Boston/ Cambridge USA. In Lyon/ France the team from Freiburg gave talks and presented a scientific poster about their project with 57 competing teams from Europe.

Since March the team of 18 bachelor and master students and three supervisors develops the uniCAS toolkit. This tool will enable researchers to control gene regulation of mammalian cells - more accurately, effectively and faster than before. The modified dCas9 protein can target and bind defined genes and in this way modify the amount of gene products. In fundamental research this kind of tool helps researchers to better understand the function of certain mammalian genes. Additionally uniCAS could be applied as a tissue engineering tool. BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies and the Faculty of Medicine are funding the project.

The Freiburg iGEM- Team is getting ready for the World championship: “We want to be one of the frontrunners in Boston” Philipp Schwenk, student of the iGEM team, explains. In the remaining two weeks until the championship in Boston the young researchers will try to improve the Toolkit to present new results. However, they do not have much time left: “we are happy about our success, but after Lyon is before Boston”

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