I had a fun lunch with Drew Endy today, and with a local iGEM team on Friday.
Here you see my souvenirs, a cartoon primer and a page from the Registry. Don’t lick it, as each yellow spot is a paper blot of DNA. With a special hole punch, you grab the DNA and splice it into E.Coli, the common bacteria in our intestines.
iGEM is the “International Genetically Engineered Machines” contest, where teenage kids reprogram bacteria to smell better or perform various feats, from digital logic with flashing oscillators, to glowing arsenic detectors to biofilms that record pictures (a self-developing “E.Coliroid” if you will).
Each year the projects get more ambitious, as the biological parts are added to the “open source” library of BioBricks.
Recent grand prize winners were from Slovenia and Peking.
Drew is a co-founder of iGEM and a brilliant speaker on synthetic biology. I last saw him when he was still at MIT, and I put together a panel with George Church and Rodney Brooks.
Leave a Reply