Students win silver at synthetic biology competition

A student team from the University of Colorado Boulder won a silver medal in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Giant Jamboree in Boston in November. The event is the top synthetic biology competition in the world.

The iGEM competition, which began in 2003, provides each team with a kit of biological parts at the beginning of each summer. The kit consists of genetic components such as promoters that respond to particular stimuli, genes or regulators that students use to build biological systems and operate them in living cells. Students then use these parts, or parts of their own design, in their projects.

The CU-Boulder iGEM team wanted to tackle the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, like MRSA and tuberculosis, in a way that didn’t damage the body’s healthful bacteria colonies at the same time. They focused on phage therapy, which is a virus that uses bacteria’s cellular resources to reproduce until the host bacteria’s cell is eventually destroyed.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a phage system that is able to more specifically target the DNA of a bacterial infection, resulting in cell death. What made the CU-Boulder team’s efforts noteworthy was its development of a delivery system for the phage therapy. The result is that the CRISPR-Cas9 phage binds to part of the DNA in the cell and cuts the DNA strand, killing the bacteria cell.



Unlike previous years, this year’s iGEM competition had no regional qualifying round, creating formidable competition: 2,500 undergraduate and graduate synthetic-biology researchers from 245 universities across 32 countries. The 2014 Buffs iGEM team was confident it could compete at the international level.

Last year’s 2013 Buffs iGEM team was also successful, winning a North American Regional award for best new BioBrick and publishing its research in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology.

“It’s hard to believe I had never heard of iGEM until earlier this year,” says Leighla Tayefeh, then a CU senior (now an alumna) with a double major in molecular, cellular and developmental biology and neuroscience.



“But the idea of synthetic biology’s vast potential to benefit society enticed me to join the team. We wanted to stand out and work with new technology, so this led us straight to the endogenous CRISPR-Cas9 system and the clinical need for an alternative to antibiotics.”

iGEM encourages teams to engage in educational outreach. Last summer, the CU-Boulder team hosted a camp from Heritage High School in Littleton, Colo., teaching DNA basics. The high school students extracted their own DNA from saliva and examined differences between pathogenic and healthy DNA fragments. The CU-Boulder team also collaborated with Colorado State University’s iGEM team to validate some of their findings during the project.

“The 2014 CU iGEM team was successful at making progress on a difficult scientific problem, namely alternatives to fight antibiotic resistance, but also at impacting the local community. The high school students who came to visit have written, raving about their experiences,” says Robin Dowell, assistant professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and BioFrontiers faculty member, who served as the CU-Boulder iGEM mentor for the last two years.

— Laura Kriho
Jan. 6, 2015