Students win gold for glowing mold
Chaz Firestone
Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: Campus News
"Every time anyone makes something, they break up their project into BioBricks that are put into the Registry of Standardized Biological Parts at MIT," said Tito Jankowski '08, a team member and self-described "iGEM evangelist."
"Now, anyone can go to the Registry and get a part that will say, 'If you include this part in your system, it will make your cells glow,' " Jankowski said.
A biomedical engineering major with eyes for entrepreneurship, Jankowski praised the competition for its ingenuity and the research experience it provides to undergraduates.
"Most people, when they do research, have a professor who tells them, 'You should do this, you should do that,' " he said. "iGEM isn't that at all. Not only did we have our own lab, we figured out exactly how to do everything ourselves."
Galaiya, a biophysics and international relations double-concentrator who came up with the glowing-lead-detector idea, said the team entered the 10-week competition with very little knowledge of how to run a lab, let alone the specific protocol for cutting and pasting DNA from one cell to another.
"My job over the summer was to make sure we had ordered all the chemicals and reagents," Galaiya said. "I'm used to working in a lab where all the reagents are just there - I don't think about where they come from."
After weeks of preparation, a steep learning curve and a $25,000 sponsorship from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, the team joined over 50 other delegations in early November at MIT's "iGEM Jamboree" for two days of project presentations.
Scheinberg and Jankowski recounted some of the more clever projects presented at the Jamboree.
"One of them was called BactoBlood," Scheinberg said of the project from the University of California at Berkeley. "It was using bacteria as red blood cells. They were able to genetically engineer them so that they wouldn't be attacked by the immune system, but were able to carry oxygen like red blood cells. And that's important, because there's a blood shortage right now."
"Now, anyone can go to the Registry and get a part that will say, 'If you include this part in your system, it will make your cells glow,' " Jankowski said.
A biomedical engineering major with eyes for entrepreneurship, Jankowski praised the competition for its ingenuity and the research experience it provides to undergraduates.
"Most people, when they do research, have a professor who tells them, 'You should do this, you should do that,' " he said. "iGEM isn't that at all. Not only did we have our own lab, we figured out exactly how to do everything ourselves."
Galaiya, a biophysics and international relations double-concentrator who came up with the glowing-lead-detector idea, said the team entered the 10-week competition with very little knowledge of how to run a lab, let alone the specific protocol for cutting and pasting DNA from one cell to another.
"My job over the summer was to make sure we had ordered all the chemicals and reagents," Galaiya said. "I'm used to working in a lab where all the reagents are just there - I don't think about where they come from."
After weeks of preparation, a steep learning curve and a $25,000 sponsorship from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, the team joined over 50 other delegations in early November at MIT's "iGEM Jamboree" for two days of project presentations.
Scheinberg and Jankowski recounted some of the more clever projects presented at the Jamboree.
"One of them was called BactoBlood," Scheinberg said of the project from the University of California at Berkeley. "It was using bacteria as red blood cells. They were able to genetically engineer them so that they wouldn't be attacked by the immune system, but were able to carry oxygen like red blood cells. And that's important, because there's a blood shortage right now."