Synthetic Biology in Cambridge
Research activities and studentship opportunities at the University of Cambridge. There is an index of research groups engaged in Synthetic Biology related work, with funding news and resources for people considering work in Cambridge. See a collection of web sites with extensive local information.
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The OpenLabTools Project is a new initiative that will provide a forum and knowledge centre for the development of low cost and open access scientific tools at the University of Cambridge, with an emphasis on undergraduate and graduate teaching and research. The programme starts this year with a number of projects that will be offered to establish the core components required for such tools; these include data acquisition, sensing, actuating, processing and 3D manufacturing. Protocols, designs and tutorials will be published on the openlabtools.org website. These components will be form the basis of new open source instruments, developed and maintained by a community of undergraduate and graduate students of the University, and shared widely. For more information, see...
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by Mary Abraham and Jochen Rink
Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge
We investigated the effect of using music to enhance the sub-optimal system of undergraduate laboratory research assistants (Researcheria virginium). Many aspects of the interaction between the undergraduate and the laboratory bench leave much to be desired. We focused on the simplest — yet easily quantifiable — laboratory skill, the noble art of accurate pipetting.
Background
Many publications have documented the beneficial effects of music on mind and body, a phenomenon known as the Mozart effect.[1] Intelligence improves whilst one listens to music. It is also known that classical music causes significant increases in the milk yield of Holstein cows (Bovus holsticus). We merely attempted to see...
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Cambridge: the UK’s most successful city Cambridge has come first in a report comparing cities across the country by Jonny Barlow Wednesday 25th January 2012, 18:21 GMT Cambridge’s economy has ranked first in an annual Cities Outlook report, suggesting that that Cambridge could play a significant role in driving the country’s economic successes amidst a bleak national picture.
This is in light of the publication of the think-tank Centre for Cities’ annual Cities Outlook report on 64 cities last Monday, in which Cambridge performed well across a range of measures pertaining to education, employment and inequality.
Of particular note was the city’s proficiency in terms of innovation, with over four times as many patents granted in Cambridge than in second-placed Aldershot....
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Â
From the press release:
Cambridge University Press is pleased to announce the addition of six more academic presses to its University Publishing Online (UPO) platform. 2012 will see the addition of content from Anthem Press, Boydell & Brewer, Edinburgh University Press, Nottingham University Press, Pickering & Chatto and the University of Adelaide Press. Launched in October 2011, University Publishing Online provides access to thousands of titles from scholarly Presses around the world, accessible through quick, powerful search and browse functionality. Anthem Press are scheduled to launch in March with 125 titles across a broad range of subjects, from drama and theatre to policy and international relations through to medicine. The Boydell & Brewer...
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Cambridge is 'geekiest' city in the UK. A survey has placed Cambridge as the UK’s technological capital and 'geekiest' city. This puts the city ahead of London, which came only fourth behind fellow technological heavyweights Gloucester and Brighton, claims a new survey by Ebuyer.
The University is responsible for training a tech savvy Cambridge population. Oxford proved to be relative luddites as they only managed eighth place. This is the second recent defeat by Cambridge, as this year's National Student Survey found that Cambridge students were significantly happier with their university education than Oxford ones. Cambridge beat off competition from other cities with an impressive ‘Geek score’ of 24.
The total was calculated from categories including the percentage of workers...
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Less Talk, More Action: Improving Science Learning
From The New York Times, By BENEDICT CAREY Published: May 12, 2011
Over the past few years, scientists have been working to transform education from the inside out, by applying findings from learning and memory research where they could do the most good, in the classroom. A study published in the journal Science on Thursday illustrates how promising this work can be — and how treacherous.
The research comes from a closely watched group led by Carl Wieman, a Nobel laureate in physics at the University of British Columbia who leads a $12 million initiative to improve science instruction using research-backed methods for both testing students’ understanding and improving how science is taught.
In one of the initiative’s...
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An index of published articles and interviews for iGEM teams at the University of Cambridge - with links to PDFs and audio files.
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Click here for the website for the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Undergraduate teaching: The Natural Sciences Tripos is the framework within which most of the science is taught in Cambridge. It is taught by sixteen Departments and includes a wide range of physical and biological sciences and the history and philosophy of science.
Postgraduate teaching: The Board of Graduate Studies is charged with the admission, registration and approval of the University's graduate students. Prospective students should start here - for an introduction to the University of Cambridge, the courses we offer, how to apply for postgraduate study, how your application will be processed, and immigration and other important information.
Graduate Union: which represents...
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PhD Studentships in Cambridge
The Board of Graduate Studies manages admission of the University's graduate students. Prospective students should start here - for an introduction to the University of Cambridge, the courses we offer, how to apply for postgraduate study, how your application will be processed, and immigration and other important information.
Click here for more information about Cambridge
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iGEM is an undergraduate synthetic biology competition where student teams are given a kit of biological parts from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The aim is to use this kit to design and construct new biological systems and operate them in living cells. The teams will first present the projects at the iGEM Regional European Qualifiers in the autumn, and if successful, at the iGEM Championship Jamboree held in early November at MIT.
iGEM has grown as 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, 84 teams in 2008, 112 teams in 2009, 130 teams in 2010 and 160 teams in 2011. Projects have ranged from banana and...
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Grand Prize, Winner of the BioBrick Trophy: Slovenia
1st Runner Up: Peking
2nd Runner Up: BCCS-Bristol
Finalists:
BCCS-Bristol
Cambridge
Imperial College London
Peking
Slovenia
TUDelft
Track Award Winners:
Best Food or Energy Project: BCCS-Bristol
Best Environment Project: Peking
Best Health or Medicine Project: Washington & Freiburg Bioware (Tie)
Best Information Processing Project: ETHZ Basel & Tokyo Tech (Tie)
Best Manufacturing Project: MIT
Best New Application Area: Slovenia
Best Foundation Advance: Paris Liliane Bettencourt
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The iGEM2010 Jamboree is here again, running Nov 6th-8th. The Cambridge team presented the E.glowli story, showing a set of BioBricks to allow generation of bioluminescence in a wide range of colours which have applications both as reporters for biosensors and as natural light sources.
A number of strategies were used to extend the use of firefly luciferase: (i) codon optimisation for increased light output, (ii) use of a luciferin regenerating enzyme, and (iii) mutagenesis to create a number of different colours.
Light producing systems from Vibrio fischeri were also explored. The team created the first BioBrick to emit light in normal E. coli strains without the addition of any external substrate.
The team made extensive use of Gibson Assembly to manufacture these parts,...
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Fresh as a daisy: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Paola Antonelli
Paola Antonelli is senior curator in the MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design. In 2008, she organized the exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind, a showcase of the latest developments at the interface between design and science.
When I was looking for new work to feature in my upcoming show Talk to Me, an exhibition on the communication between people and objects that is slated to open at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York next summer, I immediately thought of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, a remarkable recent graduate of the Design Interactions program at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. The clarity, aesthetic and intellectual elegance conveyed in Ginsberg's art marries an undeniable design talent with...
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Aleszu Bajak, Biotechniques.com
Seven undergraduates from the University of Cambridge have taken gold at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. The student team designed two biosensor parts to create a tunable biosensor that uses color as its output. iGEM is a global synthetic biology competition that challenges undergraduates worldwide to build simple biological systems from a supplied kit of standard, interchangeable parts.The team of undergraduates won the competition by engineering two biological parts that overcome limitations of current biosensor designs
Seven undergraduates from the University of Cambridge have taken gold at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition.
The Cambridge team focused on...
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'Building block' biology
25 March 2010. By Mun-Keat Looi (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/2010/Features/WTX059005.htm)
The new field of synthetic biology aims to make biology controllable, predictable and designable. Mun-Keat Looi asks if you can really engineer a biological organism and hears how a unique competition for undergraduates is helping the field gather momentum.
What if you could engineer an organism to do whatever you want: produce life-saving drugs cheaply, generate energy, or detect and clear waste from a polluted lake? And what if building that organism was like constructing a model using toy bricks or piecing together an electronic circuit? Welcome to the world of synthetic biology.
"The theory is that we now know enough...
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University of Cambridge iGEM2010 team's video description of Dan Gibson's DNA assembly protocol - and tribute to its use in Synthetic Biology. See also the Guide to Gibson Assembly
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Finding the key - cell biology and science education.: "Publication Date: 2010 Sep 20 PMID: 20863704 Authors: Miller, K. R. Journal: Trends Cell Biol No international research community, cell biology included, can exist without an educational community to renew and replenish it. Unfortunately, cell biology researchers frequently regard their work as independent of the process of education and see little reason to reach out to science teachers. For cell biology to continue to prosper, I argue that researchers must support education in at least three ways. First, we must view education and research as part of a single scientific community. Second, we should take advantage of new technologies to connect the research laboratory to the classroom. Finally, we must take the initiative in...
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Nanobiotechnology: Scaling up synthetic gene circuits: "
Nanobiotechnology: Scaling up synthetic gene circuits
Nature Nanotechnology 5, 631 (2010). doi:10.1038/nnano.2010.178
Authors: Guilhem Chalancon & M. Madan Babu
Complex artificial networks of genes have been designed that can sense a number of input signals in a user-defined logic to produce predictable output behaviours in mammalian cells.
(Via Nature Nanotechnology.)
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We would like to thank everyone who is helping us out with iGEM 2010.
Sponsors at the University of Cambridge:
The School of Biological Sciences,
Department of Genetics,
Department of Plant Sciences,
Department of Biochemistry,
Department of Physiology, Neurobiology & Development,
The School of Technology,
Department of Engineering, Division of Life Sciences,
Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (SynBio2010)
The University of Cambridge iGEM team and organisers would like to thank the following sponsors for their support and for their interest in the iGEM competition and Synthetic Biology.
Jeremy Minshull and colleagues at DNA2.0 (http://www.dna20.com/) for once again the very generous offer of free DNA synthesis.
...
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Timetable for 2010
Work Groups for SynBio2010 tasks & student photos
Synthetic Biology website in Cambridge (www.synbio.org.uk)
Course photographs
Course Assessment
BioBrick standards
Team Building Exercise
Lecture resources
Introduction to Synthetic Biology (Jim Ajioka)
Bacterial gene expression (Jim Haseloff)
Molecular Biology techniques (Jim Ajioka)
Reporter genes (Jim Haseloff)
Experimental Design (Gos...
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25 students participated in this year's Summer crash course in Synthetic Biology at the University of Cambridge. The course included lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions covering modern microbiology and molecular genetics techniques, software modelling, literature review, presentation and project-based challenges. The students were drawn from across Biology, Engineering and the Physical Sciences in Cambridge, with visitors from Harvard, KAUST and the Royal College of Arts in London.
Lectures
Introduction to Synthetic Biology (Jim Ajioka), Bacterial gene expression (Jim Haseloff), Molecular Biology techniques (Jim Ajioka), Reporter genes (Jim Haseloff), Experimental Design (Gos Micklem), Sequencing and Synthesis (Gos Micklem), Microbial Diversity (Keith Johnstone), Open...
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The Cambridge Science Festival
Meera - This week saw the start of the Cambridge Science Festival. So I've come along to one of the main event days which is Science on Saturday. I've kicked things off today by visiting the plant sciences department and with me to tell me more is Jim Haseloff from the plant sciences department here at the University of Cambridge.
Jim - The theme of this year’s science festival is diverse science, looking at diversity in development, diversity in physiology, diversity in properties of plants. Within the tent, we’ve got quite a range of activities and diverse plants, there’s a supply of seed and flowers, synthetic biology and application to engineering of plants both now and the future. Essentially, thinking...
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iGEM: the student synthetic biology experience
by Mun-Keat Looi, Wellcome Trust blog, http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/igem-the-student-synthetic-biology-experience/
European teams, including Imperial and Cambridge at the 2009 iGEM jamboree finals at MIT.
Making anything work in genetic engineering is difficult in itself, but doing it in 10 weeks is remarkable, even more so when many of your team know little about biology and have never previously stepped foot in a lab.
Last week I wrote about the iGEM synthetic biology competition and it still astounds me that the participants are undergraduate students. But what is it really like to take part in iGEM?
iGEM teams are usually made up of 6-10 first and second year undergraduates from a mix of...
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The new field of synthetic biology aims to make biology controllable, predictable and designable. Mun-Keat Looi asks if you can really engineer a biological organism and hears how a unique competition for undergraduates is helping the field gather momentum.
What if you could engineer an organism to do whatever you want: produce life-saving drugs cheaply, generate energy, or detect and clear waste from a polluted lake? And what if building that organism was like constructing a model using toy bricks or piecing together an electronic circuit? Welcome to the world of synthetic biology.
"The theory is that we now know enough about biological systems to be able to start putting them together," says Dr Gos Micklem, Director of the Cambridge Computational Biology...
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The Wellcome Trust today announces the recipients of its inaugural stipends aimed at supporting UK entries to iGEM - the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition.
iGEM is an annual competition that encourages teams of undergraduate students to develop innovative synthetic biology projects based around biological building bricks, or 'BioBricks', in the same way that engineering students might develop a robot using standardised parts.
Six teams of students have each received Wellcome Trust stipends of between £9000 and £15 200 to enable them to develop their entries for the competition, which takes place this year in Cambridge, Massachusetts in November. The stipends will provide promising undergraduates hands-on experience of synthetic biology.
The...
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NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE PREVIEW
iGEM2009 and Do-It-Yourself Genetic Engineering
By JON MOOALLEM (New York Times: Published: February 10, 2010)
IT ALL STARTED with a brawny, tattooed building contractor with a passion for exotic animals. He was taking biology classes at City College of San Francisco, a two-year community college, and when students started meeting informally early last year to think up a project for a coming science competition, he told them that he thought it would be cool if they re-engineered cells from electric eels into a source of alternative energy. Eventually the students scaled down that idea into something more feasible, though you would be forgiven if it still sounded like science fiction to you: they would build an electrical battery powered by...
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Grand Prize, Winner of the BioBrick Trophy: Cambridge
1st Runner Up: Heidelberg
2nd Runner Up: Valencia
Finalists:
Cambridge
Freiburg bioware
Groningen
Heidelberg
Imperial College London
Valencia
Track Award Winners:
Best Food or Energy Project: UNIPV-Pavia
Best Environment Project: Cambridge
Best Health or Medicine Project: Stanford
Best Manufacturing Project: Imperial College London
Best New Application Area: Valencia
Best Foundation Advance: Alberta
Best Information Processing Project: TUDelft
Best Software Tool: Berkeley Software...
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The Cambridge team was awarded the Grand Prize at the iGEM2009 Synthetic Biology competition finals at MIT (http://2009.igem.org). This was against stiff competition from over 100 teams in top international institutions. The students (Vivian Mullin, Alan Walbridge, Shuna Gould, Siming Ma, Mike Davies, Megan Stanley and Crispian Wilson), provided a superb description of their work engineering DNA devices for transcriptional tuning and pigment production in environmental biosensors. As well as winning the overall prize for best project, the Cambridge team was awarded a gold medal, and trophy for the best project in the Environment Track.
News articles:
CUED: The Cambridge 2009 iGEM team awarded the Grand Prize
Wired UK: Building new life forms at the iGEM Jamboree
Discovery...
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James King, Daisy Ginsberg Tuur Van Balen and Michael Barton, designers-artists-technologists have recently graduated from the Royal College of Arts in London, and have followed the Cambridge iGEM2009 team over the summer, participating in the Synthetic Biology Crash Course.
James and Daisy have delivered their own workshops on design, human engagement and futurology. in addition, they have developed a parallel project, based on the team's production of bacterial pigments. In an imagined application, probiotics might be engineered to express different coloured pigments in response to different gut conditions or upsets....allowing self diagnosis of specific ailments by inspection of one's poo. James and Daisy attended the iGEM2009 Jamboree, bearing an aluminium case with a scatalog -...
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The Cambridge iGEM 2009 team presented their E. chromi project at the iGEM Jamboree at MIT. They described new BioBricks for the production of pigments in bacteria, and sensitivity tuners for the construction of new enviromental biosensors. (1st November 2009) See a full video of the presentation at http://2009.igem.org/files/video/Cambridge.m4v - including the surprise Happy Birthday song for Mike at the end of the presentation!
See photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/haseloff/collections/72157615302666424/
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The Wellcome Trust is offering a number of student stipends to support the participation of a limited number of UK teams in the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM). The stipend will provide promising undergraduates with hands-on experience of synthetic biology during their 2010 summer vacation, with the aim of encouraging young scientists to consider a career in interdisciplinary research.
Bursaries are available for a maximum of ten students per team and for up to ten weeks during the summer vacation. Each bursary provides a stipend of £180 per week. There may be only one application per team for a maximum of ten stipends. Application forms must be completed by a team adviser or sponsor. Application deadline is 10 January 2010. Each student must be...
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iGEM 2009: Synthetic Biology Competition Bigger than Ever this Halloween
September 24th, 2009 by Aaron Saenz
, SIngularity Hub
Like some Frankenstein monster composed of space camp, graduate school, and science fair, iGEM is ready to spring to life this Halloween. TheInternational Genetic Engineering Machine competition is now in its 6th iteration and will feature some of the best undergraduate work in synthetic biology the world has ever seen. The main jamboree from Oct 31st to Nov 2nd will allow the more than 110 teams competing to reveal the successes and failures from their summer long foray into the laboratory. As always, iGEM is hosted by MIT and the public is invited to attend the awards ceremony on Sunday November 1st at 8am. If...
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Cambridge iGEM2009 team
The Cambridge 2009 iGEM team has created two kits of parts that will facilitate the design and construction of biosensors.
Previous iGEM teams have focused on genetically engineering bacterial biosensors by enabling bacteria to respond to novel inputs, especially biologically significant compounds. There is an unmistakable need to also develop devices that can 1) manipulate input by changing the behaviour of the response of the input-sensitive promoter, and that can 2) report a response using clear, user-friendly outputs. The most popular output is the expression of a fluorescent protein, detectable using fluorescence microscopy. But, what if we could simply see the output with our own eyes?
They have produced a set of transcriptional systems for...
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iGEM Team ordering information
Dear iGEM 2009 Team Member,
GENEART welcomes you to our gene synthesis service sponsorship for the 2009 iGEM competition. We would like to help make your iGEM 2009 project a success.
GENEART is sponsoring the iGEM 2009 competition with a very special gene synthesis rate of only USD 0.20 (EUR 0.15) / bp*. Together, the 112 iGEM 2009 teams can order up to 280 kb of synthetic DNA at that rate. Synthetic DNA beyond that will be priced at the competitive rate of USD 0.49 (EUR 0.39) / bp*. Shipping worldwide is USD 35.00 (EUR 25.00) per shipment.
> summary GENEART’s 2009 iGEM partnership (pdf)
To serve all teams equally, GENEART, along with the iGEM committee, have set the following regulations per order:
All...
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The students and organisers would like to express our thanks to the following companies for help through sponsorship, provision of equipment loans and consumables for the University of Cambridge iGEM2009 team:
We would especially like to acknowledge the help of Jeremy Minshull and his colleagues at DNA 2.0 Inc. for their help. The Cambridge team used GeneDesigner software, and the synthesis of the violacein operon was very generously donated to the Cambridge team.
The people we would particularly like to thank for their enthusiasm and support of the Cambridge team are:
David Laflin and Dominic Hogan at Fisher Scientific for chemicals, plasticware and lab consumables.
Miles Collier at Invitrogen for supplying the E-gel system with E-gels and loan of a Blue...
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Crash course in Synthetic Biology at the University of Cambridge
Timetable for 2009
Course Assessment
Team Building Exercise
Student participants
Software resources
Lecture materials
Introduction to Synthetic Biology (Jim Ajioka)
Bacterial gene expression (John Archer)
Reporter genes (Jim Haseloff)
Experimental Design (Gos Micklem)
Rhodococcus (John Archer)
Sequencing and Synthesis (Gos Micklem)
Microbial Diversity (Keith Johnstone)
Mol Biol for Syn Biol (Tom Ellis)
Synthetic Parts, Genes & Circuits (Jim Ajioka and Jim Haseloff)
Stochasticity: Noise in Biological Systems (Lorenz Wernisch)
Biological Modelling & SBML (Nicolas Le Novere)
Modelling for Synthetic Biology (Andrew...
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Judging/Judging Criteria
IN DRAFT FORM -- CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES
iGEM 2009 will award medals.
Gold Medal
Silver Medal
Bronze Medal
All teams can earn medals. Please see the Judging Criteria page to study the detailed criteria for each type of medal.
iGEM 2009 will award the following prizes based on overall performance and excellence across all aspects of iGEM:
Grand Prize, Winner of the BioBrick Trophy
1st Runner Up, Winner of the PoPS Plaque
2nd Runner Up, Winner of the Synthetic Standard
A small number of additional teams will be recognized as iGEM Finalists
iGEM 2009 hopes to award the following Special prizes, conditional on the accomplishments presented by the teams:
Best New BioBrick Part, Natural
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The iGEM Project
by Ellis O'Neill
The Triple Helix, Cambridge 800th Anniversary Edition 2009
A report on participation in the Cambridge 2008 iGEM team. Ellis describes what it was like to participate in this exciting and challenging project in Cambridge.
Cambridge's team consisted of undergraduates from diverse academic backgrounds. The aim of their project was to produce self-organising bacterial populations that would produce voltage fluxes - similar to action potentials that carry information in the brain.
Download a PDF: http://www.camtriplehelix.com/magazine/Lent09_43.pdf
More information about Triple Helix: http://www.camtriplehelix.com/
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Synthetic biology takes root
http://www.research-horizons.cam.ac.uk/spotlight/single-component-biology-is-past--bioengineering-has-begun2.aspx
Creating circuits from multiple components is routine in engineering. Can living systems be constructed using similar principles?
Living systems are complex, often involve tens of thousands of genetically encoded components, and possess feedback mechanisms for self-organisation, reproduction and repair. They produce functional structures that are many orders of magnitude more complex than the most sophisticated man-made artefacts known today. It is generally accepted that understanding such complex genetic systems requires more than a description of its component parts; knowledge of the dynamic interactions within a system is also essential....
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Aims & Objectives: The ultimate aim of the project is to display a significant degree of control over not only the individual cells motion but also the population as a whole in an attempt to demonstrate spatiotemporal pattern formation. Ideally, we'd like to demonstrate and design a morphogenic system
Biological Analogue
The main biological analogue would be: Transient gene expression leading to permanent activation of behaviour
Inspiration
We have taken inspiration from:
Weiss' pulse generating network
Alice & Chris' pretty cool flipping/recombinase switch
The controllable chemotaxis vision of James & Russell.
What it does, how it works
Chemotaxis is (pretty much) irreversibly switched on in a strain not normally displaying this...
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Computational Biology at Microsoft Research in Cambridge
Research centre for the application and development of computational methods and tools for modeling and analyzing complex biological systems. "Computational modelling of biological systems is becoming increasingly common as we try to understand biological phenomena in their full complexity. In order to meet this challenge we need to establish the methodologies and techniques that will enable us to gain a system-level understanding of biological processes. The goal of the Computational Biology Division is to enhance biological comprehension by using methods and tools designed in Computer Science to model and analyze biological systems."
Within the Computational Biology Division, Andrew Phillips' lab is developing...
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Gatsby Charitable Foundation funds international plant science research centre in Cambridge
Cambridge will be home to a new research laboratory for the study of plant development, thanks to the largest single gift received by the University since the launch of the 800th Anniversary Campaign.
£82 million has been provided by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation for an iconic building designed by award-winning architects Stanton Williams.
Construction work, led by Kier Group, has now begun on the site, which is situated in the private working area of the Botanic Garden. A groundbreaking ceremony was held today attended by Lord Sainsbury, founder of the Gatsby Foundation, and the University of Cambridge Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alison Richard.
Due for completion in late 2010,...
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News from the Cambridge Network
Information from the Cambridge Network with the latest science and technology development news about from Cambridge - including news about biotechnology ventures.Â
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iGEM 2008: Novice Bioengineers Get Their Freak On
A recent iGEM judge reflects on spontaneous dance parties and the future of molecular machines.
From Seed Magazine by JASON KELLY • Posted December 4, 2008 04:27 PM
iGEM 2008 teams made their mark on the tagged-up sign-in chalkboard. Click to enlarge. Credit: David Appleyard/iGEM
In 1973, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer spliced the DNA of a frog into a bacterial cell and became the first genetic engineers. In the decades that followed, biotechnology delivered pest-resistant crops, a collection of therapeutics, and it now promises a route to sustainable liquid fuels. In spite of these successes, modern-day genetic engineering is an arcane craft practiced almost exclusively within well-funded university...
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Visitor's guide to Cambridge
Visit Cambridge: Online guide to Cambridge compiled by the Cambridge City Council, with lots of useful information such as maps, accomodation guides, details of walks and tours, events, pubs and restaurants. (http://www.visitcambridge.org)
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Graduate Studies at Cambridge
The University of Cambridge has attracted many of the very best minds since 1209, when a group of scholars left Oxford to set up a new institution in Cambridge. Today the University has grown to around 17,500 students (7,000 of whom are graduate students), and 3,000 teaching and administrative staff. Of the graduate students, 50 per cent come from overseas, and well over a third are women. The University and its Colleges are now spread throughout the city.
At Cambridge, graduate courses are tough: we offer a lot and we expect a lot. But if you have the commitment, the ability and the motivation, you can expect great rewards - exhilarating intellectual satisfaction and a capability much sought after by employers in industry and academia. The full text of...
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iGEM2008 Jamboree at MIT
1200 team members and 800 attendees met at MIT for presentations by the 84 teams from 21 countries who participated in iGEM2008. Congratulations to the Slovenia team who took away the BIOBRICK Grand Prize (see below). Moments before the award ceremony, there was some consternation as the BIOBRICK prize had gone missing from it's pedestal. The work of master thieves was suspected. By a stroke of luck, the missing prize was found, curiously wrapped for protection in a University of Cambridge iGEM team T-shirt, under the trophy table.
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Plant Visions
100 years of plant imaging in Cambridge
An exhibition of images to celebrate the centenary of the opening of the Plant Sciences laboratories in 1904.
Curated by Beverley Glover and Jim Haseloff
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Overview of the Cambridge iGEM2008 project
Since the emergence of Synthetic Biology, bacteria have been engineered to perform a wide variety of simple tasks. They can be made to express proteins, respond to their environment and communicate primitively with each other. A key goal for the field is to create a communicating, organised and differentiated population of bacteria that could be capable of performing even more specialised tasks. The Cambridge project took inspiration from the brain, one the most complex biological structures known, and one which self-assembles from a very simple starting point.
Development of the brain requires the combination of chemical systems that play a role in self-organisation and connectivity, and electrical signalling that is required for rapid...
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Prize Studentships for iGEM2009
Studentships are available for Cambridge students wishing to take Part II courses in Plant Sciences, Genetics and Biochemistry: £2000 stipend over the summer plus a trip to Boston. For more information and application details: email Jim Haseloff at jh295@cam.ac.uk
Last year, students of Biology, Mathematics, Physics and Engineering grappled with DNA construction techniques over the summer, and built modular devices for generating patterns and voltage in microbial systems. A summary of their work can be found at http://2008.igem.org/Team:Cambridge
For more information see:
http://www.igem.org (main page for the iGEM competition)
http://www.synbio.org.uk/cambridge/igem-prog.html (a list of web sites and wikis for previous Cambridge iGEM...
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