Spotlight

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of SynthetIC bIology reSearCh StartS here

International Genetically Engineered Machine. A name likely to raise the eyebrows if not the anxiety level of the general public. iGEM. Now that sounds much nicer, if not downright trendy in a culture that likes to stick that little ‘i’ in front of a range of products, events, and ideas.

The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, or iGEM, has not faced the anxiety of the public and is certainly not trendy in any big way. What it has done though is invigorate a new generation of scientists, promote an open and community-minded attitude to research, and encourage the development of new tools and ideas in the fi eld of synthetic biology.

Anders Nygren is an associate professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary (U of C) and co-director of the Centre for Bioengineering Research and Education. He’s also a faculty advisor for the Calgary iGEM Collegiate team and sees the enthusiasm the students bring to the competition every year.

“Often times I fi nd my role is to get the students together and then get out of their way and let them do their work. It’s really amazing to see what happens when you get the students together in a room for the summer.”

When iGEM began in 2003, it was a course that was part of the month long Independent Activities Period at MIT in Boston, where those kind of enthusiastic students were challenged with making a cell blink. The Some of the University of Lethbridge Collegiate iGEM team. following year it became a local competition among fi ve “thIS IS probably teams and by last year’s competition, it had grown to the fIrSt and 245 teams in three competitive divisions drawn from 34 countries. Among the 3,000 participants, there was probably the only a strong representation from Canada, and Alberta tIme they have goIng has had a strong showing including the University of Calgary Collegiate team scooping up the Best Human through unIverSIty Practices Award in last year’s fi nals. of maKIng mIStaKeS iGEM is simple in concept, challenging in execution, and both wide and deep in the science needed to pull to optImIZe off a project that will get you past the Regional JamSomethIng.” borees and into the International Jamboree in Boston in the late fall. At the start of the project each team — hans-Joachin wieden is given a kit of ‘BioBricks’ or biological parts from iGEM’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts to work

The University of Calgary Collegiate iGEM team.

BioBricks supplied by iGEM to teams around the world.

with for their project. The teams then use the standardized parts to build their own novel biological systems.

The U of C team received fi ve trays of 384 wells each with the option of searching for more in the Registry Catalog. The iGEM philosophy of “Get & Give (& Share)” requires the teams who develop new parts to give them to the registry and share their experiences in using and developing the parts through blogs and wikis.

The Calgary Collegiate team has collected these biotech Lego blocks and has plans to create a novel synthetic biological system to rapidly detect harmful E. coli in beef. Just like an academic research project or commercial lab, there are direct fi nancial costs associated with the project along with time and energy on the part of the students and their faculty mentors. Budget items range from travel to the iGEM Jamborees, kits and reagents, sequencing services, poster and presentation materials for the competition, and some modest salaries for some of the team members to keep the projects up and running full time for several months.

Typically, universities don’t directly fund iGEM teams except for space and some materials. So to cover the costs, the team has to search for funding. And these aren’t modest projects that can be covered with a bake sale and bottle drive. Students aren’t there just for a summer job or to be a winner (though they certainly don’t lack competitive drive). They are there to join an iGEM team because they have developed a love for research and a desire to keep pushing forward.

Larry Zhang is a biochemistry graduate on the University of Alberta iGEM team and didn’t hesitate when asked why he was giving up his summer to a life in the lab. “I think working with DNA is fun,” he said. “Understanding DNA is to understand ourselves. I just fi nd research is fun and I like doing it.”

This year one of the major iGEM sponsors of Alberta teams is Genome Alberta, along with government organizations such as Alberta Innovates, OCSS (O’Brien Centre for Summer Studentships), PURE (Program for Undergraduate Research Experience), and NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada). Supporters of iGEM get the usual acknowledgement that goes with a sponsorship, but the bigger win comes with engaging the students and pushing past some of the limitations often found in the usual funding research models says Genome Alberta’s chief scientifi c offi cer Gijs van Rooijen, “Within a traditional academic peer review system, out of the box research is often diffi cult to fund as it would be considered too risky or lacking the preliminary data. However, this is exactly what is going to be required to address today’s societal challenges and this is where the iGEM program and its students shine.” This opportunity to stretch the funding envelope has created a unique funding and research collaboration between Genome Alberta and the University of Calgary iGEM team. Though some funding had already been set aside for iGEM sponsorships, an alignment in research goals resulted in close to $60,000 in funds going into iGEM teams with the largest share going to the University of Calgary Collegiate iGEM team and their E.coli initiative. In the ongoing scramble for funding and prestige among Alberta universities and the more pointed head-to-head competition between Calgary and Edmonton this wasn’t a random decision by the not-for-profi t genomics funding organization. In late 2012 Genome Alberta launched a competition for “Research and Innovation Leading to Rapid Detection of Pathogenic E.coli.” The initiative was widely publicized and the U of C iGEM team saw it as an inspiration for their own efforts. Once Genome Alberta had gone through the competition funding applications and awarded funding for two projects under the research program there wIthIn a was still co-investment funding available with spendtradItIonal ing criteria that limited where it could be allocated. The U of C iGEM team fi t the criteria. aCademIC peer Like the two major projects being funded under the revIew SyStem, out competition model, the U of C team wants to create a rapid detection tool that can be used in a commercial of the boX reSearCh setting to detect E.coli in the live animal stream. IS often dIffICult In a recent blog post here is how they characterize the project: to fund aS It would “Leveraging nanotechnology, protein engineering, be ConSIdered too and material science, we are building a cheap and rapid-acting portable device to identify cattle shedrISKy or laCKIng the ding an abnormally large amount of harmful E. coli. prelImInary data. These cattle can then be isolated from the rest of the population, reducing overall bacterial contamination — gijs van rooijen amongst the herd. Our work has not been limited to

University of Alberta Collegiate iGEM team members at work in their lab.

the lab—conversations with ranchers, academics, meat processors, and feedlot owners have informed our system’s design. Ultimately, by reducing levels of harmful E. coli upstream of the slaughter process, we hope to reduce bacterial contamination of beef and improve human health.”

Not content to stick to the lab and literature searches, the students took a fi eld trip to Cargill’s meat processing facility in High River, AB. Lisa Oberding is a Calgary iGEM veteran and acts as an advisor and lab technician for the team and says the trip was a valuable part of the project. “Cargill gave us a really good chance to talk to the people in charge of food safety and see what they would envision as a useful system for their purposes.” She also noted that fi eld work won’t stop on the processing fl oor, “We’re trying to do that with a lot of areas in this industry so that we can actually tailor a system to something that would be useful and would meet a need not currently met in the industry.”

It is a tall order, but students and faculty connected with iGEM feel that the projects and the competition are important.

“In an iGEM team you can make mistakes and nobody is grading you,” says Hans-Joachin Wieden, the faculty advisor for the Lethbridge iGEM teams. He noted that in an iGEM team, you’re not worried about that 4.0 grade point and that for the students, “this is probably the fi rst and probably the only time they have going through university of making mistakes to optimize something.”

Another important part for these researchers who are likely to fi nd themselves in an industry, government, or academic research setting is the opportunity to choose their own research project and design their own experiments. Rai Chaudhuri is studying Biomedical Science at U of C. He returned for a second year of iGEM: “You actually come up with your own project and have more say in what you are To see this story online visitdoing.” In keeping with the Calgary team’s efforts to make their E.coli http://biotechnologyfocus.ca/?p=7383detection method practical she was equally enthusiastic about getting beyond the science. “You actually get to go out and fi gure out what is going on in the industry side of things, on the policy side of things, and I think that dialogue between the different sectors is extremely important in coming up with something useful.” With real world science comes real world concerns around the application of synthetic biology and teams have a component that iGEM calls Human Practices. The judging criteria for this part of the competition states: “Will the world be a safe place if we make biology easy to engineer? How do the lessons of the past inform the discussion going forward? Think beyond just convincing people that ‘synthetic biology is good.’ Find a new way to help human civilization consider, guide, and address the impacts of ongoing advances in biotechnology.” Projects funded by Genome Alberta require that similar issues and other societal and ethical concerns be addressed by the applicants which made iGEM sponsorship an even better fi t knowing that this part of the science equation is being addressed. Science is no longer enough and biotech researchers and business now look to corporate social responsibility and the social licence to operate. Erin Kelly was on the Lethbridge high school iGEM “we’re tryIng to do team last year and this year is an advisor to the high that wIth a lot of school team and in her fi rst year on the entrepreneurial team. She said they wanted to make sure areaS In thIS that people who aren’t involved in iGEM or familiar InduStry So that with synthetic biology should know what the team is doing and perhaps have some input. As the team we Can aCtually is focused on a business application she noted that taIlor a SyStem the focus is on “Looking at the ethics in science and business and particularly in biomedical science and to SomethIng that business. I think we will write up a summary of biowould be uSeful ethical practices in business – both positive and negative – so we can make it available to other people.” and would meet a Students committing time and effort to tackle a need not Currently synthetic biology project when they could be earning money for the next year’s tuition and spending time met In the InduStry.” enjoying the summer at the cottage or on the patio — lisa oberding must think that what they are doing has a pretty big payoff beyond a trip to Boston and the pride of a job done well. They see the bigger promise of synthetic biology and a vision for the future. The University of Alberta team draws a comparison to other game changing technologies. “Things that have completely shifted paradigms like the microprocessor or the internal combustion engine, the kind of thing that after it is fi rst developed the potential is not quite realized but all technology for the next 30 or 40 years is driven by that one technological advance.” The teams fi rst have to get past the regional Jamboree in Toronto this October and if they qualify, there is the fi nal International Jamboree in Boston this November. After that, infl uencing technology for the coming decades is up to this new crop of researchers.