iGEM projects

An ultra low-cost 3D-printed motorised web-streaming autofocus microscope for synthetic biologists, letting researchers tailor the microscope to their needs - allowing imaging on any lab-bench, in the incubator, fume-hood or the field using remote access and battery power, or use many OpenScopes for parallel rapid preliminary screening. A microscope for schools and laboratories with small budgets, based on low-cost and easily sourced components. Click here to view project wiki.

Alexander Mayorov (Natural Sciences), Mie Monti (Natural Sciences), Anran Chen (Natural Sciences), Ciara McCarthy (Natural Sciences), Lucie Studena (Natural Sciences), Geoffrey Ma (Bioengineering), Michael Friedman (Bioengineering), CJ Ong (Mechanical Engineering), Jake Levi (General Engineering), Claire Restarick (General Engineering)

An ultra low-cost 3D-printed motorised web-streaming autofocus microscope for synthetic biologists, letting researchers tailor the microscope to their needs - allowing imaging on any lab-bench, in the incubator, fume-hood or the field using remote access and battery power, or use many OpenScopes for parallel rapid preliminary screening. A microscope for schools and laboratories with small budgets, based on low-cost and easily sourced components. Click here to view project wiki.

William Earley (Biology), Rajiv Kurien (Engineering), María Fernández-Martos Balson (Engineering), Simon Swan (Biology), Olivia Murray Lala (Engineering), Lorenzo Venturini (Engineering), Ocean Haghighi-Daly (Biology), Atticus English (Biology), Katerina Naydenova (Biology/Physics), Souradip Mookerjee (Medicine)

mӧsbi stands for marchantia open-source biosensor. mӧsbi encapsulates the team's vision of creating a user-friendly, open-source biosensor using the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. With its sturdy genetic framework and modularity, mӧsbi represents a new step in popularising synthetic biology and making it accessible to a large audience. Click here to view project wiki.

Angelina Munabi (Engineering), Fergus Riche (Engineering), Ginny Rutten (Medicine), Guy Lewy (Biology), Hugh Wilson (Physics), Miha Pipan, (Biology), Salil Bhate (Maths), Trang-Anh Nghiem (Physics), Will Kaufhold (Biology/Physics)

iGEM teams have characterised an array of biosensor components, but outputs are often inconsistent and, despite common assembly standards, it remains difficult to compose functional and precise biosensor circuits. The Cambridge iGEM 2012 team aimsed to create new standards for characterisation, validation and application of biosensors. The protocols aim to be modular in design, allowing any biosensor built to this standard and measured with low-cost instrumentation that we will prototype ourselves. Novel fluoride biosensors were adapted to use light as an output and interfaced with microcontroller electronics. Click here to view project wiki.

Stuart Bell (Biology), Charlotte Bransfield-Garth (Biology), Jolyon Martin (Biology), Paul Mallaband (Engineering), Oliver Meacock (Biology), Andreas Petrides (Engineering), Emmy Tsang (Biology), Tom Whittaker (Biology)

The Cambridge iGEM2011 team worked with bionanophotonic systems - experimenting with the use of self-assembling protein structures from squid that produce striking iridescence in vivo. They produced BioBrick compatible forms of squid reflection, expressed and purified the protein, and produced thin films with bright and dynamic reflectance properties (see right). The films responded in fractions of a second to physical changes, such as humidity-induced film swelling. Reflectins form a new class of potential biosensors with radically improved properties. The team also produced improved software for Gibson Assembly, with an interface to sequence libraries (including the iGEM Registry), graphical construction tool and automated PDF output of oligo design and experimental protocol. Click here to view project wiki.

Marta Bozek (Biology), Xin (Heather) Gao (Engineering), Joe Harvey (Mathematics), Matthew Jones (Biology), Haydn King (Engineering), Catriona McMurran (Biology), Jonathan Very (Biology), Katy Wei (Physics), Felix Zhou (Engineering)

The Cambridge iGEM2010 team worked on regeneration systems for bioluminescence and better, brighter light output, different coloured luciferases, instrumentation for quantitation and modelling the feasibility of using bioluminescent trees as a replacement for street lamps. They also pushed technical boundaries, and promoted the adoption of advanced DNA assembly methods, which have emerged from Daniel Gibson's genome-scale synthesis work at the Venter Institute. Click here to view project wiki.

Will Handley (Physics), Theo Sanderson (Biology), Peter Emmrich, (Biology), Paul Masset (Engineering), Hannah Copley (Medicine), Emily Knott, (Engineering), Bill Collins, (Engineering)
Benjamin Reeve (Biology), Anja Hohmann, (Biology).

The Cambridge iGEM2009 team created two kits of parts to facilitate the design and construction of biosensors in the the future. The team successfully characterised a set of transcriptional systems for calibrated output - Sensitivity Tuners, and successfully expressed a spectrum of pigments in E. coli, designing a set of colour generators. Click here to view project wiki.

Michael Davies (Engineering), Shuna Gould (Biology), Siming Ma (Biology), Vivian Mullin (Biology), Megan Stanley (Physics), Alan Walbridge (Engineering), Crispian Wilson (Biology)

The Cambridge iGEM2008 team project aimed to set a foundation for future research in engineered multi-cellularity by pursuing electrical and peptide signalling in bacteria, and cellular self-differentiation through spontaneous spatial patterning. Click here to view project wiki.

Linda Boettger (Visiting student from US), Marie Chapart (Visiting student from France), Kevin Cheng (Biology), Kathryn Chung (Biology, Cambridge), Daniel Goodman (Visiting student from US), Chris Hill (Biology), Rebecca Koenigsberg-Miles (Engineering), Arjun Mehta (Maths/Physics), Stefan Milde (Biology), Dmitriy Myelnikov (Biology), Ellis O'Neill (Biology), Ian (Yee Yen) Tang (Engineering), James Wu (Medicine), Xiao-Hu Yan (Maths)

In order to engineer interesting and useful functions in biology, a robust and extensive range of intra- and inter-cellular signalling pathways must be available. By analogy with the Internet, where adoption of the standard TCP/IP communication protocol has enabled worldwide connectivity from supercomputers to refrigerators, such a system must be accessible to cells of different heritage and structure (different “operating systems”) with the potential for processing messages received and taking action dependent on their content (see diagram at right). In the course of the project they identified and worked on candidates for both intracellular (PoPS Amplifier project) and intercellular (Peptide signalling project) communication pathways, and additionally made progress towards adding a new Gram-positive platform for synthetic biology to the Registry. Click here to view project wiki.

Yi Han (Engineering), Narin Hengrung (Biology), Yi Jin Liew (Biology), Dmitry Malyshev (Biology), Stephanie May (Engineering), Yue Miao (Biology/Maths), Stefan Milde (Biology), Xinxuan (Sheila) Soh (Biology), Lovelace Soirez (Engineering), David Wyatt (Engineering), Zhizhen (Jane) Zhao (Physics).

Multicellular organisms undergo self-organisation during development. Our aim was to engineer self-organised pattern formation in free swimming bacteria cells by providing them with an artificial system allowing bi-directional communication. Escherichia coli cells would be equipped with genes derived from independent quorum sensing systems from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Vibrio fischeri. These systems can enable communication between cell populations and regulated switching between competing cell fates. The negotiation of cell fates within bacterial populations can be visualised precisely by expression of different fluorescent proteins. We further sought to construct biological parts that would render possible the construction of a population based bi-stable switch and modelled the behaviour of single cells as well as the interactive behaviour of populations of cells containing these genetic circuits. Our experiments verified that differential cell motility in combination with position-dependent gene expression has the potential to generate complex patterns. Click here to view project wiki.

Kaj Bernhardt (Biology), Elizabeth Carter (Biology), Nikhilesh Chand (Biology), Jisun Lee (Engineering), Yang Xu (Engineering), Xueni Zhu (Engineering)

The Cambridge iGEM2005 team explored a method to control chemotaxis using maltose regulation. Click here to view project wiki.

James Brown (Engineering), Russell Brown (Chemistry, Oxford), Eva Cheng (Engineering), Chris Field (Engineering), James Godman (Biology), Alice Young (Biology)

An ultra low-cost 3D-printed motorised web-streaming autofocus microscope for synthetic biologists, letting researchers tailor the microscope to their needs - allowing imaging on any lab-bench, in the incubator, fume-hood or the field using remote access and battery power, or use many OpenScopes for parallel rapid preliminary screening. A microscope for schools and laboratories with small budgets, based on low-cost and easily sourced components. Click here to view project wiki.

William Earley (Biology), Rajiv Kurien (Engineering), María Fernández-Martos Balson (Engineering), Simon Swan (Biology), Olivia Murray Lala (Engineering), Lorenzo Venturini (Engineering), Ocean Haghighi-Daly (Biology), Atticus English (Biology), Katerina Naydenova (Biology/Physics), Souradip Mookerjee (Medicine)