iGEM, booze sensors and epidemic models

For most of the day today, the iGEM teams are breaking up into groups in which students present their projects. The range of projects is pretty dizzying. They are loosely divided into five tracks - energy, information processing, basic foundational projects, health and environment. I started out with a team called the Missouri Miners, from the University of Missouri, Rolla, who showed off two projects they had attempted - a biological timer, which fluoresces for a set amount of time when a cel

| 2 min read

Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
2:00
Share
For most of the day today, the iGEM teams are breaking up into groups in which students present their projects. The range of projects is pretty dizzying. They are loosely divided into five tracks - energy, information processing, basic foundational projects, health and environment. I started out with a team called the Missouri Miners, from the University of Missouri, Rolla, who showed off two projects they had attempted - a biological timer, which fluoresces for a set amount of time when a cell encounters a sugar molecule, and a biological breathalyzer test, which senses ethanol and methanol. Both projects are still ongoing - many groups don't finish, Peter Carr, the judge at the panel and an MIT Media Lab researcher , told me, "and there?s no shame in that." Especially for campuses entering teams for the first time, getting everything planned and ready for the summer (according to the rules, the work must be done between May and October). In the question session, an audience member asked whether their devices had any practical applications. Maybe a battery-free test for tipple level will find a place on the shelves of CVS, or maybe it won't, and while applicability is good, Carr said, projects that demonstrate some kind of basic principles and put them together in a neat way are just as good. (One of last year's winners made E coli that smelled of peppermint when it was growing, and banana when the growing had ceased.) Next, in the health track - the Virginia Tech team showed their results after a summer getting E coli to model an epidemic. The benefits, they said, was that you can use actual experimental data, a true biological model, rather than data from past epidemics, which may be incomplete or not relevant to a specific situation. The idea was to use a phage that can either kill the cell (induce lysis) or lie dormant (be lysogenic) - they used a promoter that fluoresced red or green depending on which of the two occurred. (The promoter is one of the three parts their group will now add to the Registry, one of the key elements of the contest.) Then, to model epidemic spread between populations, they transferred "infected" liquid between wells in a 96-well plate, using airport data to mimic travel between cities.
Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

The Scientist Logo
Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!
Already a member? Login Here

Meet the Author

  • Alla Katsnelson

    This person does not yet have a bio.
Share
3D illustration of a gold lipid nanoparticle with pink nucleic acid inside of it. Purple and teal spikes stick out from the lipid bilayer representing polyethylene glycol.
February 2025, Issue 1

A Nanoparticle Delivery System for Gene Therapy

A reimagined lipid vehicle for nucleic acids could overcome the limitations of current vectors.

View this Issue
Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Lonza
An illustration of animal and tree silhouettes.

From Water Bears to Grizzly Bears: Unusual Animal Models

Taconic Biosciences
Sex Differences in Neurological Research

Sex Differences in Neurological Research

bit.bio logo
New Frontiers in Vaccine Development

New Frontiers in Vaccine Development

Sino

Products

Tecan Logo

Tecan introduces Veya: bringing digital, scalable automation to labs worldwide

Inventia Life Science

Inventia Life Science Launches RASTRUM™ Allegro to Revolutionize High-Throughput 3D Cell Culture for Drug Discovery and Disease Research

An illustration of differently shaped viruses.

Detecting Novel Viruses Using a Comprehensive Enrichment Panel

Twist Bio 
Zymo Research

Zymo Research Launches Microbiome Grant to Support Innovation in Microbial Sciences