SULSA Bulletin

To see the latest SULSA bulletin click here.

Search

Scottish iGEM teams win prizes at 2010 iGEM competition

Three Scottish University teams, part funded by the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA), competed this year in the 2010 iGEM Jamboree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. They represented three SULSA Universities: Aberdeen, Edinburgh and St Andrews.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh University’s team, named “Illuminati”, won the “iGEM Prize for Best Model” and a Gold medal. They were represented by ten Edinburgh students: Donal Stewart, John Roger Wilson-Kanamori, Meng Lu, William Rostain, Maria Kowal, Richard Partridge-Hicks, Sarah Hunt, Marta Bereska, Hannah Fraser and Matthew Coombes; instructed by: Dr. Chris French and Dr. Alistair Elfick; and advised by Dr. Damian Barnard. Illuminati’s project entitled “Communicating through bridges” focused on building three kinds of bridges: bridges between bacteria using light sensing as a means of communication, bridges for synthetic biology through the development of a new protocol for biobrick insertion through homologous recombination, and bridges for the communication between people. The full description of the project can be found by accessing the following link: http://2010.igem.org/Team:Edinburgh.

St Andrews

St Andrews, who was competing for the first time, won a Gold medal and had a team of nine students: Rachael Blackburn, Lukas Ly, Alasdair Morton, Patrick Olden, David Owen, Fatemeh Salimi, Sarah Shapiro, James Taylor and Jonathan Ward. The supervisors were: Dr. Anne Smith, Dr. Chris Hooley, Dr. John Mitchell, Dr. Wim Verleyen and Olivia Mendivil.

St Andrews’ project investigated the inner workings of the Vibrio cholera quorum sensing system, computational models to stimulate the operation of Cholera and the basic science behind a potential means of preventing Cholera through the application of synthetic biology.

A full description of the project can be found here: http://2010.igem.org/Team:St_Andrews

Aberdeen

Aberdeen University’s team won a silver medal with the project AyeSWITCH. The team was made up of Krystal Annand, Brychan Cromwell, Lisa Dryburgh, Joseph Hoare, Justyna Kucia, Stephen Lam, Christina McLeman, Ben Porter, Maragaret-Ann Seger and Liz Threlkeld and supervised by Dr. Oliver Ebenhoeh, Dr. John Geddes, Dr. Alessandro De Moura, Dr. Mamen Romano, Dr. Yasushi Saka, Prof. Duncan Shaw, Dr. Ian Stansfield, Dr. Marco Thiel and Dr. Ekkehard Ullner.

Project AyeSWITCH engineered a novel genetic toggle switch in yeast, which is regulated at the translational level and allows mutually exclusive expression of either green or cyan fluorescent protein.

A full description of the project can be found here:

http://2010.igem.org/Team:Aberdeen_Scotland

Full results of the 2010 iGEM competition can be found here:

http://ung.igem.org/Results?year=2010

SULSA: Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA) was established in 2007 as a research pooling partnership between the Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Strathclyde that is supported by the Scottish Funding Council.

SULSA aims to maintain and advance Scotland’s global position in the life sciences by recruiting international research leaders and funding world-class research facilities. SULSA also connects researchers across Scotland through events and collaborative PhD studentships.

SULSA’s initial investments are focused in three broad interrelated research themes: cell biology, systems biology and translational biology.

iGEM: International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) and the Registry of Standard Biological Parts have a large and diverse user community. The skill levels run from high-school students who are new to synthetic biology to world-acclaimed experts in the field. Our user community spans the globe with users from over 26 countries and regions participating in the iGEM competition alone last year. The field of synthetic biology is young, but individual synthetic biologists have already progressed from iGEM competition team member to graduate student advisor, or from advisor to professor advising a team and running a lab.

The Registry of Standard Biological Parts serves the academic research community, providing the first and largest catalog of standard biological parts. While much of the growth has been in the iGEM community, over 90 academic labs are now members of the Registry community. We are making it easier for labs to participate and the number is growing.

This site focuses on the Registry, iGEM, and lab accounts and personal pages of the enduring community of synthetic biology based on standard parts. This site is a mixture of wiki pages and computer generated pages that allow users to manage their personal accounts as well as the accounts of their lab and their teams.

For more information please visit: http://ung.igem.org/Main_Page

Latest News

Ready for the challenge in 2012, St Andrews' iGEM team talk about the 2011 competition.

Wed, 25/01/2012 - 18:24

St Andrews iGEM European Jamboree: An Advisor’s Perspective

BBSRC providing £10.2m for Scottish Life Sciences PhDs

Tue, 24/01/2012 - 17:46

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has funded two Doctoral Training...

Tue, 17/01/2012 - 13:43

The Lupus Research Institute invites applications for Distinguished Innovator Awards, a new global...

Mon, 14/11/2011 - 11:12

After winning trophy for best iGEM model in Amsterdam, Edinburgh students go on to win prize for...

Mon, 31/10/2011 - 10:35

A Target Development Fund, has been set up with the support of TPP Global Development (TPP), the...

Tue, 25/10/2011 - 14:50

Meeting at the The Royal Society of Edinburgh, on Wednesday 9 November 2011

SULSA Call for Applications - Funding for High Throughput Screening (HTS) projects

Wed, 12/10/2011 - 13:58

Applications are now invited for the next round of SULSA High Troughput Screening (HTS)...

Mon, 10/10/2011 - 21:45

The on-line SUPA Prize Studentship Competition is open with a closing date of 20th January...

Mon, 10/10/2011 - 18:33

Conference at the University of Strathclyde on Tuesday 18th October 2011.

Recipients of SULSA Chemistry Catalyst Fund Announced

Mon, 03/10/2011 - 09:57

SULSA has awarded £200K of funding for medicinal chemistry projects in Scotland. Twelve...

SulsaNavigation