IGEM:VGEM/2007

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2007 Virginia Genetically Engineered Machine (VGEM) Team

Welcome to the new VGEM Team wiki! The VGEM Team was founded by George McArthur so that the University of Virginia could send an undergraduate bioengineering team to compete in MIT's international Genetically Engineered Machines competition (iGEM). The objective of the competition is to design and build an engineered biological system using DNA. Systems will be constructed from standard biological parts. Last year, there were around 40 schools participating from around the world (see map). You can read more about the competition here We'll be adding new information regularly, so be sure to check up on us soon.

Want to learn some basic ideas regarding Synthetic Biology? Check out this comic by Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist at MIT.

Acknowledgements

This team was made possible by the generous support from the following:

• The School of Engineering and Applied Science
• The Virginia Engineering Foundation
• The Office of the Vice President for Research
• The Department of Biomedical Engineering
• The Department of Chemical Engineering
• The Department of Biology

Personnel

Our group is an interdisciplinary conglomeration that includes researchers from The School of Engineering and Applied Science, The College of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Medicine.

Undergraduate Team

• George McArthur, 3rd year, Chemical Engineering and Music - email the VGEM team
• Kevin Hershey, 3rd year, Chemical Engineering
• Amy Schell, 3rd year, Biomedical Engineering
• Ranjan Khan, 2nd year, Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience
• Emre Ruhi, 3rd year, Biology

Graduate Mentor

• Brianne Ray, Microbiology

Faculty Advisors

• Erik Fernandez, Chemical Engineering
• Jason Papin, news Biomedical Engineering
• Ron Bauerle, Biology

Project

Our project will be mind-blowing and reality-bending. We'll be programming microbes to tackle a medical or environmental engineering problem, or both! Our group is interested in utilizing synthetic biology engineering principles in the metabolic engineering of bacteria for the production of sophisticated biomaterials, fine chemicals such as biopharmaceuticals, and renewable energy alternatives such as ethanol and hydrogen.

Planning

During our weekly meetings throughout the spring semester, we'll be discussing relevant literature and developing project ideas. Our actual experiments will occur during the summer session, and we hope to have our results in order by the beginning of the fall semester in September.

• Meetings

Documentation

• Lab Notebook

Resources

• Registry for Standard Biological Parts
• BioBricks Protocols
• iGEM on OpenWetWare
• Synthetic Biology Community
• DNA Hack
• Systems and Synthetic Biology Journal

Papers

Introductory Papers

• Extreme genetic engineering: An introduction to synthetic biology

Reviews and Perspective Papers

• Genetic parts to program bacteria by Chris Voigt

Foundational Papers

• A synthetic oscillatory network of transcriptional regulators by Michael B. Elowitz and Stanislas Leibler
• Construction of a genetic toggle switch in Escherichia coli by James J. Collins et al
• Foundations for engineering biology by Drew Endy

Current Research Papers

• Production of isoprenoid pharmaceuticals by engineered microbes by Jay Keasling et al