For the first time this year, a KIT team competed in iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine), a synthetic biology competition held November 5th through 8th at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Undergraduates from top universities such as Harvard and Cambridge participate in this global undergraduate competition. Entries are judged on a combination of skills: the online presentation of notes from meetings on ideas and design development, team web page displays of records from experiments and designs development, manufacture of genetically modified organisms and the registration of their standard biological parts. The 2010 competition welcomed 130 teams and roughly 1500 participants. The University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Kyoto University, Osaka University, and Hokkaido University were among the nine teams from Japan.
Our Kyoto-KIT team drew acclaim for their unique “art from E.coli” theme. These innovators created drawing pens that use genetically modified
E.coli to make lines that glow when held under a black light. The team’s web
page was the fifth (of 130) most-viewed page in the pre-contest iGEM home
page ranking and was featured in an article in Kyoto Shinbun Newspaper
entitled, Art from Intestinal Bacteria.
The team’s oral presentation drew hearty applause from the entire auditorium and such favorable comments as, “That was a good presentation.” and “I liked the joke you told.” Their work satisfied all the criteria to receive a gold medal in the absolute evaluation.
Poster and poster presentation scores were combined to identify a winner. When the results of the poster division were announced, the KIT-Kyoto team had won “Best Poster, the only team out of the 130 entries to do so. This was the first time for a Japanese team to be recognized with a divisional award. You can see their poster at this link:
http://2010.igem.org/files/poster/KIT-Kyoto.pdf
Professor of Applied Biology, Dr. Yamaguchi Masamitsu, who traveled to Massachusetts with the team, comments: When the head judge announced “The Best Poster Award goes to KIT-Kyoto.” our team ran to the stage, cheered and applauded by the 1500 participants. I was pleased to see the way the whole team shared the glory. Seeing how they persisted in this ambitious project, I felt a renewed appreciation for KIT students.
Click here to see the KIT-Kyoto project team website. |
