IIT-M students strike gold at synthetic biology competition

Updated on: Tuesday, November 23, 2010

After two silvers, the undergraduate students of IIT Madras have won a gold at the International Genetically-Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) a fortnight ago. iGem is the premiere undergraduate synthetic biology competition in the world.

“We were keen on working on a project of social relevance. So, we chose the food and energy sector. The idea was to use synthetic biology to give diabetes patients a fighting chance to retain a comfortable life, without compromising on their sweet-tooth,” said A. Srivathsan, a final-year Biotech student.

The idea was discussed and developed over g-chat during internship in the summer among 15 students who began working as two teams, one on DNA and the other on cells for the past six months. This time the team had a chemical and electrical engineer and the rest pursuing biotechnology.

Student teams participating in iGEM are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at the bio-tech labs in IIT-M, the students pursued the project ‘Pro-biotic Sweetner, controlled by a pseudo-AND gate'.

“We chose a project that will help people,” said S. Sriram. The idea was to use synthetic biology to engineer pro-biotic lactic acid bacteria used in the production of dairy products like yogurt, buttermilk and curds, to produce Monellin, a heat and pH stable sweetening protein. Successful engineering could radically reduce the calorific content of these products and the plan was to develop regulatory systems that could be tweaked to suit varied purposes, he said.

“We did encounter a lot of difficulties. Parashuram and Shashi, the doctoral students, guided us in troubleshooting and helped us with protocols,” said Nishant.

Apart from funding from IIT-M, Dr. Reddy's Labs sponsored the project of the students. Some of the Indian teams backed out due to lack of funding, says Prof. Guhan Jayaraman, who has guided the team for three years. To ensure the success of the students at iGEM every year, Mr. Guhan roped in second and third year students into the team as they need not start from scratch next year. “We want to make it bigger next year,” says P. Chaitra, a third-year student.

Slovenia bagged the BioBrick trophy this year. “When Slovenia won for the first time, it made national news. We are aiming to be one of the six finalists next year,” says Prof. Guhan. That would require generous funding from the corporates.

IIT-M students strike gold at synthetic biology competition

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