Team:UCSC/Students

iGEM Students

   Following our gratifying adventure at BioCurious, the team felt confident in the role DIY biotech would play in synthetic biology innovation. We were also inspired to know that by participating in the iGEM competition, we were at the forefront of this revolutionary movement. The projects being designed, teams being forged, and ideas being meticulously crafted by teams across the globe represented how powerful and widespread this movement has become. iGEM itself, consisting of only 32 teams a mere ten years ago, represents the vigor of how rapidly this movement has grown to its now current state. Given our views on the movement, we wanted to reach out to other iGEM teams to understand how they viewed the DIY biotech movement.

   For this we decided to reach out to our friends at the UCLA iGEM team, whom we met at the 17th Annual University of California Systemwide Bioengineering Symposium hosted by the Bioengineering Institute of California. The iGEM team at the University of California, San Diego, were kind enough to invite the UCLA iGEM team, the UC Davis iGEM team, and ourselves to meet at the Symposium in San Francisco. Each morning of the Symposium, June 13th-15th, we all met in a reserved room at the Symposium to present and discuss our projects to one another. It was a valuable and much-appreciated opportunity to connect with other iGEM students and form relationships with passionate, creative, and intelligent individuals. For this year’s competition, the gifted UCLA iGEM presented their impressive focus on protein cages with potential use in drug delivery.

   Interestingly, the team had heard of Do-It-Yourself biology but did not fully understand the extent of its meaning. To provide a description of Do-It-Yourself biology, we linked the idea to what the iGEM teams were currently doing; in that we were utilizing technologies previously prohibited by high costs. When asked if they had considered DIY biology prior to iGEM, the UCLA students admitted that they had interests in joining research labs but had never considered taking projects into their own hands. When asked about the barriers that stand in the way of engaging in synthetic biology projects, they mentioned how equipment such as thermocyclers were a necessity as well as the education needed to apply them. We brought up the plummeting costs of equipment, from which they stated that lowering costs would undoubtedly expand accessibility to these projects; however, they emphasized that education was nonetheless an essential piece of the puzzle. The UCLA team transitioned to talking about what drove them to join in on the iGEM experience, and described how excited they felt to have the autonomy and opportunity to engage in these projects. They described iGEM as an entry point for young scientists and engineers who are able to greatly benefit from taking these projects into their own hands, and guiding the projects with their own vision. When asked if they would ever consider pioneering a DIY lab of their own, they admitted that only a short time ago they would have never dreamed of tackling such a challenge. Following their experience with iGEM, however, they feel they have been endowed with the confidence and skillset to take on ambitious goals such as those. Following this interview with the UCLA iGEM team, our team was gratified to witness the how the iGEM competition is positively shaping the ambitions and confidence of its participants, and how expanded accessibility to synthetic biology projects is allowing those ambitions to come to fruition.