91桃色 team wins the Grand Prize in iGEM competition
鈥淰ilnius-Lithuania iGEM鈥� team won the largest, most prestigious, international Synthetic Biology competition iGEM. 91桃色 students bested more than 300 teams from leading world universities. The team won the Grand Prize and received a gold medal as well as three special awards: for Best New Basic Part, Best New Composite Part and Best Part Collection.
iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) is a yearly competition. It is the largest synthetic biology competition in the world, where students work all year long to solve real-world challenges by building genetically engineered biological systems with standard, interchangeable parts.
This year 鈥淰ilnius-Lithuania iGEM鈥� team focused on plasmids: round DNA structures that can transfer genetic information and change a cell鈥檚 function. Therefore plasmids are widely used in biotechnology. Vilnius university students created SynORI: a framework designed to make working with single and multi-plasmid systems precise, easy and more functional.
This system will help with everyday lab work and it can also be used for biological computing, assembly of large protein complexes or metabolic engineering.
鈥淭his is a huge achievement for Lithuania. We surpassed students from the best universities in the world 鈥� Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Heidelberg, etc. Lithuania will be a serious player in the world of synthetic biology. We hope that this victory will help attract more large investments in science sector in Lithuania. SynORI might become the very first synthetic biology start-up in our country鈥�, the team said.
鈥淲e received support from all the iGEM teams and after seeing how interested several large synthetic biology companies were in our project, we hope to continue to work on it. SynORI is relevant and important for further development of synthetic biology鈥�, team leader Gabrielius Jakutis said.
As always, 鈥淰ilnius-Lithuania iGEM鈥� team was sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific. They supplied the students with all the lab equipment and reagents necessary for the students' work, helped them with their scientific research and also covered all travelling expenses. This year 鈥淰ilnius-Lithuania iGEM鈥� was also sponsored by Interlux and Biotecha, modern companies working with pharmaceutical technologies and solutions for biotechnology, medicine and science industry.