Gold Standard & Best Environmental Nomination!

Two weeks ago, our team competed in an international synthetic biology conference called the iGEM Jamboree in Boston. Over 353 teams from around the globe gathered to show off how they engineered biology to solve the world's problems.

If you recall, our team decided to tackle petroleum plastic waste by genetically engineering E. coli to consume Styrofoam waste and produce a biodegradable plastic called polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB). Our E. coli achieves this goal with the help of two plasmids, one that degrades monomerized styrofoam and another that produces (PHB). A genetic sequence endogenous to our strain of E. coli bridges the two processes to complete the conversion. We presented our project in poster and presentation form in Boston.

 

snippet from our presentation

 

our captain, practicing his poster pitch

iGEM has a special way of giving out awards. First, all projects are categorized as Bronze, Silver, or Gold based on how many project requirements it checks off. In addition, projects in the same "track" compete with each other. Our project competed in the Environmental track.

 

smiling faces after receiving awards!

We are happy to announce that our project was categorized as Gold and we were nominated for Best Environmental Project! These awards are documented here.  

We learned so much about research, teamwork, and persistence through our journey. It was truly a learning experience that we will never forget. Thank you so much to our donors for their support. We could not have done it without you.

 

thanks to our backers for having our backs!

If you want to learn more about our project, please check out our website.