iGEM, international student biology competition
"European Jamboree" in Amsterdam, October 1 and 2, 2011
Two of the largest schools in Lyon, renowned for their biological sciences know-how, the INSA de Lyon and the ENS de Lyon ally their talents in a synthetic biology competition, iGEM (international Genetically Engineered Machine), a contest intended for students and organized by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Objective of the iGEM contest: to modify bacteria by injecting DNA to give them a new function.
It consists of 25 persons, students, and teaching researchers:
- 4 primary supervisors, two of whom are teaching researchers from the INSA de Lyon, one from the ENS de Lyon, and one doctoral student from the UCB1 who will monitor the manipulations on a daily basis
- 8 "advisors" from various disciplines (students, recent graduates, and teaching researchers from the INSA de Lyon)
- and above all 13 students working on the project full-time; among them 10 students from the Biosciences department.
The "LYON INSA / ENS" team worked all summer on the COBALT BUSTER project: a bacteria able to store radioactive waste, and will defend it at the "European Jamboree" in Amsterdam on October 1 and 2. The global "Jamboree" will select the winner from among the finalists on November 5, 6, and 7 at MIT in Boston.
Note: the Lyon INSA-ENS team will also present its project at a conference on "Management of biofilms, industrial challenges," hosted by the National Biofilms Network (October 13, 2011, Biocitech, PARIS – ROMAINVILLE).
As the iGEM competition has met with growing success, its organizers had to implement qualifying rounds by continent. For the 8th competition, 163 teams, composed of students from the License and Masters level, are competing, including 47 in Europe.
Institut National