Team:Goettingen/iGEM

What is iGEM?

iGEM is an international competition hosted by the MIT in Boston, USA, for undergraduate students of disciplines related to molecular biology. iGEM stands for International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. One the one hand, it targets to combine aspects of education and social collaboration among undergraduate students, on the other hand, it provides a library for standardized and interchangeable parts which can be used in living systems, particularly in model organisms like E. coli. Student groups from all over the world will receive a requested kit of biological parts, also called "BioBricks", and work over the summer on an individual research project. Every year, the "Registry of Standard Biological Parts" is upgraded with further BioBricks by the participating iGEM teams. These BioBricks will be accessible to the iGEM community in the following years in order to use these parts for their own projects.

The iGEM-logo. Click on the logo to get the iGEM-Homepage.


The iGEM competition started in 2003 as a course for students of the MIT only. 2011, already 165 universities from all over the world competed against each other. This year, it is the first participation of the University of Göttingen, Germany. The iGEM competition is a great opportunity for students to gain and improve a multitude of skills that are necessary during a carrier as a molecular biologist. Such skills would be planning and organizing a project, including fund raising and team recruitment, coordination of lab work, designing experiments and working together as a team. Next to intensive lab work during the summer, also literature search and well-structured documentation of the experiments is crucial. Moreover, safety for humans and environment is key.

BioBrick System

The BioBrick system of iGEM is based on the idea to divide complex biological systems in single components that are available to all iGEM teams. Each component, also called BioBrick, is flanked by a standardized sequence that allows for easy shuttling between different biological model organisms. The standardized sequences include sites for specific restriction enzymes, EcoRI and XbaI upstream and SpeI and PstI downstream of each brick (Fig. 1). Therefore, the BioBricks also can easily be combined. The restriction sites SpeI and XbaI between two bricks can ligate together and leave behind a scar. The restriction sites are buried in the scar and are not accessible be the enzymes anymore. The BioBricks are annotated in the Registry of Standardized Biological parts and are catgorized by function. Parts are for example proteins, promoters, primers or plasmids.

Figure 1: Principle of BioBrick Standardization. Click on the picture to get to pubmed entry of this paper. Mueller KM & Arndt KM (2012). Standardization in synthetic biology. Methods Mol Biol. Vol. 813:23-43.

Part Registry

The Registry of Standardized Biological parts is a comunity ressource for all participating iGEM teams. Every team adds new parts or BioBricks to the registry every year. In return, a Distribution Kit with a selection of highly requested and well-annotated parts is provided. Parts that are not included in the Distribution Kit can be orderer from the iGEM headquarter. The Registry of Standardized Biological parts grows rapidly, since the number of teams participating in the iGEM competition is increasing, too. During the course of iGEM the regulations for the part description are improved continously, including help pages and videos.

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