<p>This year, five students from the MSc of BioInformatics & Genomics of the University of Rennes 1 tried to inaugurate the first iGEM team from their university. However, being the first is always fraught with challenges and ultimately, they were not able have their own team this year. The Rennes University students wanted to participate in iGEM to learn about synthetic biology. The team viewed synthetic biology as a scientific discipline with a lot of potential, but still in the nascent stage of development. So they were still determined still participate! These five students asked us (iGEM Paris-Bettencourt team) for advice and found that the Rennes students had computational skills that we lacked. Thus began a mutually beneficial collaboration, which lead to the development of the online program “SmellGame”.</p>
This year, five students from the MSc of BioInformatics & Genomics of the University of Rennes 1 tried to inaugurate the first iGEM team from their university. However, being the first is always fraught with challenges and ultimately, they were not able have their own team this year. The Rennes University students wanted to participate in iGEM to learn about synthetic biology. The team viewed synthetic biology as a scientific discipline with a lot of potential, but still in the nascent stage of development. So they were still determined still participate! These five students asked us (iGEM Paris-Bettencourt team) for advice and found that the Rennes students had computational skills that we lacked. Thus began a mutually beneficial collaboration, which lead to the development of the online program “SmellGame”.