Hopkins's first International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) team won a bronze medal at the annual competition.
The iGEM competition is an undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition hosted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This year 84 teams participated in the competition with over 1,000 participants from 21 countries. Sixteen teams won the gold medal, 14 teams won silver and 38 teams won the bronze. Team Slovenia was the winner of this year's Grand Prize.
The members were disappointed at the bronze medal they received. They said the criteria for the competition had gotten stricter this year. Last year, most teams had won a gold medal. This year, only 16 teams received the gold.
"We could have done better. We really hadn't finished when we went to the competition," Carrick said. "We could have characterized parts more and could have put more work into the presentation."
Like the competition, which was developed in 2003 and stemmed originally from a course taught at MIT, the Hopkins iGEM group's topic also developed from an engineering class taught by Jef Boeke, professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics. As they had already learned how to make a yeast genome in class and were familiar with the subject, the iGEM team decided to design a yeast sex detector.
"Choosing the topic was not very difficult," said Ingrid Spielman, a junior material engineering student and a member of the iGEM team. "While other teams mostly focused on using bacteria as sensors, we focused on yeast. Most people in the team were in the Build A Genome class taught by Boeke."
DiCarlo spent most of the fall of last year organizing the team. It was very difficult to launch the team.
While there were interested students, it was hard to get funding to conduct??? their research and participate in the competition.
"Getting the money for our team was very hard, because we were new," DiCarlo said. "We had to go to different departments with Powerpoint presentations and persuade professors and administrators. We applied to grants. We got the Provost Undergraduate Research Award. We did make $17,000 for our project. But compared to other groups, our funding was very small. Other groups received money from major corporations."
As a newly created team, the Hopkins iGEM team experienced lots of difficulties. They noticed that they were different from other teams that were participating in the competition.
"While we had only a few graduate students, who mostly acted as advisors to us, most teams had a lot more graduate students who were active in the project," said Rick Carrick, another junior engineering student in the team. "The other teams had graduate students directing and organizing the team, while our team was led by undergraduates."
The Hopkins team's lack of funding also manifested itself in other ways outside of the lab.
"While other groups slept in hotels, we slept at Rick's house with sleeping bags. We were a grassroots team," Spielman said.
Most teams at iGEM consisted of five to six people, according to Spielman. The 14-person Hopkins team had nearly three times as many members many others.
"You might think that having a lot of people would have helped us a lot, but we were less focused, especially after school started, because everyone had different things to do and we had to work individually," Spielman said.
For better funding and higher results, the iGEM team may change their organization next year. Instead of letting everyone who was interested in the team, the team may begin to screen the members.
"Maybe we will have to let just the BMEs in. Because they are just really good students," DiCarlo said. "We could have more professors and graduate help. That could help in funding. It would be really sad though," Spielman said. "I really liked that there was no screening for students this time. Everyone could be a part of the team."
To participate, teams must register and are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
Teams work at their own schools over the summer using the given parts and their own newly designed parts to formulate biological systems and operate them in living cells.
During the past years, projects ranged from banana and wintergreen smelling bacteria to an arsenic biosensor to Bactoblood and buoyant bacteria.
"I really want to do it again next year," Spielman said. "The iGEM is really exciting. It's about being an expert . . . at whatever your topic is.
To quote this guy who participated in the competition, 'Of course you are an expert in modeling. But with other models, you have no clue.'"
