iGEM - International Genetically Engineered Machines competition, is the world’s premiere undergraduate educational program in synthetic biology dedicated to developing synthetic machines.

What is iGEM?

Student teams are given a kit of biological parts from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at their own schools over the summer, they use these parts, and new parts of their own design, to build biological systems and operate them in living cells. This project design and competition format is an exceptionally motivating and effective teaching method. 

iGEM's Background

iGEM began in January of 2003 with a month-long course during MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP). The students designed biological systems to make cells blink. This design course grew to a summer competition with 5 teams in 2004, 13 teams in 2005 - the first year that the competition grew internationally, 32 teams in 2006, 54 teams in 2007 and 84 teams in 2008. Projects ranged from banana and wintergreen smelling bacteria, to an arsenic biosensor, to Bactoblood, and buoyant bacteria.

In 2009, it is expected that over 120 teams and more than 1200 students will participate in the competition. They will all specify, design, build and test simple biological systems made from standard, interchangeable biological parts. Teams will present their projects at the iGEM Championship Jamboree in November.

If you're ready to dive into iGEM, make your next stop the iGEM 2009 Main Page.

Alberta Ingenuity's 2009 iGEM Support Program

iGEM is an experience that utilizes the creative application of many aspects of entrepreneurism to achieve team success. These include the rigorous scrutiny of business plans, innovative fundraising, intregration of human practices, inspection of protocols and procedures of the project for alignment with ethical impacts on society, and dynamic presentation skills. In 2009, Alberta Ingenuity's iGEM Program will encourage and assist the intregration of these concepts for each Alberta team.

Events planned for the 2009 iGEM season include a Kickoff at each participating university; a competitive forum for business plan presentations; a workshop on Human Practices/E3LS (Ethical, economic, environmental, legal and social concerns); a Presentation Training Workshop; and the aGEM Jamboree. As the season progresses, there may be additional resources available for outreach activities, providing educational resources for high school teachers and training for new advisors to the iGEM teams.

The full details regarding team participation in Alberta Ingenuity's iGEM Support Program are included in the documents below.

In order to produce outstanding results at the iGEM Jamboree, we encourage Alberta teams to recruit students with aptitudes in business, interests in ethics and human practices, and who are highly skilled at laboratory work.

2009 iGEM Guide. (PDF)
iGEM Team Roster. (XLS)

A Note to Students

iGEM will challenge you. You will become part of an emerging scientific community that is defining a new cross-disciplinary field called Synthetic Biology. Synthetic Biology is fundamentally about the union of Biology and Engineering. iGEM will introduce you to the fundamental ideas of Synthetic Biology and will give you the opportunity to perform cutting-edge research in a field that is continually evolving.

Building an iGEM team is not trivial. You will need research space, funding, equipment and most of all, expertise and leadership. This will require participation of faculty members - someone with the connections to provide for all these needs. Find out more on how to develop a successful iGEM team here.

A Note to Educators

As the premiere undergraduate teaching program in Synthetic Biology, iGEM attracts the current and future leaders in the field. The competition format is highly motivating and fosters hands-on, interdisciplinary education. Biology students learn engineering approaches and tools to organize, model and assemble complex systems; while engineering students are able to immerse themselves in applied molecular biology.

aGEM

The Alberta Genetically Engineered Machines (aGEM) competition is the Alberta warm-up for iGEM.

The competition challenges students to design and build biological machines using DNA segments, called BioBricks™. These parts can be assembled to create a wide variety of applications, from biosensors for identifying environmental contaminants to cancer therapies.

Alberta Ingenuity’s support ensures the teams have the necessary resources to compete against teams from some of the world’s leading universities. Support includes providing expert advice to Alberta’s teams, establishing relationships with media and coaching the teams through interviews, as well as covering important costs such as registration fees and project seed money.

2009 Alberta iGEM Teams

2009 University of Alberta iGEM Team

2009 University of Calgary iGEM Team

2009 University of Lethbridge iGEM Team

Past Teams

2008 Alberta iGEM teams:

Alberta NINT
Lead Advisor: Wayne Materi
Location: Edmonton, AB
Alberta NINT consists of 11 students focusing on constructing extendable biological circuits.  Typically, biological circuits return on themselves making the circuits limited in their abilities.  Alberta NINT believes their research will lead to complex biological circuits in a much smaller form.  The technology developed could have various therapeutic applications to sensory, patterning and information processing systems in organisms.

University of Alberta
Lead Advisor: Mike Deyholos/Doug Ridgway
Location: Edmonton, AB
BPA is a toxin that has been shown to leech from certain types of plastic used in everyday life, and have been linked to various forms of cancer and other health concerns.  The 11 students from the University of Alberta hope to develop a biosensor which can easily detect BPA in a contaminated environment.  While the team will develop the biosensor using plant materials, the research could ultimately lead to a cost-effective application without the aid of plants which would be used in poorer, third-world countries.

Calgary – Ethics
Lead Advisor: Gregor Wolbring
Location: Calgary, AB
The Calgary – Ethics team is the first undergraduate team to focus their project on the ethical, environmental, economic, legal and social (E3LS) issues attached to synthetic biology.  Consisting of three University of Calgary students, the team will determine the understanding of the general population, government agencies, industry, NGO’s, academic and high school students of synthetic biology.  Ultimately, the understanding of these issues will determine the potential of synthetic biology.

Calgary – Wetware
Lead Advisors: Sonja Georgijevic/Christian Jacob
Location: Calgary, AB
Consisting of five students, Calgary – Wetware will concentrate on creating a protein which aims to control bacterial infections.  Using directed evolution, the team will create conditions for E. coli to produce a type of toxin which will theoretically kill other forms of bacteria.  The research developed could lead to use as a novel antibiotic for bacterial infections, and perhaps lead to fighting various diseases such as cancer and AIDS.

Calgary – Software
Lead Advisors: Sonja Georgijevic/Christian Jacob
Location: Calgary, AB
Calgary – Software is a team of nine students expanding software capabilities for applications in synthetic biology. The team is focusing on improving the simulation capabilities of the software, strengthening the results and credibility, and integrating additional functions to the evolutionary algorithm. Based on these improvements, the team hopes to create barcodes which will easily identify various molecules. The results are an ever-expanding registry for future use in synthetic biology

University of Lethbridge
Lead Advisor: HJ Wieden
Location: Lethbridge, AB
Tailing ponds from oil extraction in the tar sands poses major environmental and health issues.  This team of 10 students is focusing on creating a “Bacuum,” a bacteria designed to seek and degrade harmful hydrocarbons found in tailing ponds.  This technology will have many applications in tailing ponds where they affect the biosystems around them.

Lethbridge CCS
Lead Advisor: Marc Slingerland/HJ Wieden
Location: Coalhurst, AB
Lethbridge CCS is the only high school team representing Alberta at iGEM 2008.  Ligase is an enzyme which binds various fragments of DNA, and the six students are concentrating on the ligase-independent cloning procedure, as the ligation step in cloning proves to be the most problematic step.  Through their efforts, Lethbridge CCS hopes to make a more-efficient cloning procedure for future iGEM competitors, among others.
 

 Feature | 2007 University of Alberta iGEM team, Butanerds

Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), iGEM challenges students to design and build biological circuits with modular genetic parts called BioBricks™ - that are similar to electronic components. These parts can be assembled to create a wide variety of applications, from biosensors used to locate and identify environmental contaminants to cancer therapies. Students work with minimal guidance from supervisors. The iGEM program provides all the necessary ingredients, software and instructions and also organizes an annual ‘Jamboree’ where teams share their results.

In 2008, Alberta Ingenuity has expanded its support of the iGEM teams by ensuring these teams have their wheels ‘greased’ and are primed to compete - and win - against teams from some of the World’s leading universities such as Oxford, Stanford and Yale. Ingenuity’s support includes providing expert advice to Alberta’s teams, establishing relationships with media and coaching the teams through interviews as well as covering important costs such as registration fees, student travel and project seed money. Also new for 2008, high school teams have been piloted, with entries from both Calgary and Lethbridge involved.

Alberta is a leader in synthetic biology, a field that is transforming biology into a true engineering discipline: instead of concentrating on traditional biology practices of categorizing or dissecting life forms, we can now create new recipes to innovate life forms. Made possible by united advances in information technology, metabolic engineering and nanotechnology, synthetic biology lets researchers quickly design biological programs and “boot” them in living cells, or possibly even create fully synthetic cells. Based on software and automated DNA synthesis, genetic engineering becomes easy and fast, like computer programming. The field promises to accelerate Alberta’s sustainable energy and environmental initiatives and, potentially, create a foundation for a robust, knowledge-based bio-economy.