Medal Criteria

Bronze Medal Criteria

1. Team registration.

Done!

2. Complete Judging form.

Our completed judging form can be seen here.

3. Team Wiki.

You're reading it.

4. Present a poster and a talk at the iGEM Jamboree.

That's the plan.

5. The description of each project must clearly attribute work done by the students and distinguish it from work done by others, including host labs, advisors, instructors, sponsors, professional website designers, artists, and commercial services.

The sub-projects can be accessed via the following links: transgenic wires, sugar logic, cisgenic wires, population regulation, degrons. In each case, any time where work was done by someone other than the student responsible, this has been made clear.

In addition, our acknowledgements page lists all those who helped us with our project.

6. Document at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device used in your project/central to your project and submit this part to the iGEM Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines).

Our BioBricks can be seen here.

Silver Medal Criteria

1. Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected.

Our experimental data for the degron parts can be seen on that sub-project's page

2. Document the characterization of this part in the “Main Page” section of that Part’s/Device’s Registry entry.

See BBa_K1399000 as an example.

3. Submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines).

This part has been submitted and received.

4. iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench, for example relating to (but not limited to) ethics, sustainability, social justice, safety, security, or intellectual property rights. Articulate at least one question encountered by your team, and describe how your team considered the(se) question(s) within your project. Include attributions to all experts and stakeholders consulted.

We set out to ask 'What is the role of Division of Labour in a modular system, in human terms? What factors do we need to consider if we want to design such a system?' We made a social sciences report based on our research of the role of division of labour in modular systems, by finding links between various systems, ranging from social to biological ones. We interviewed other iGEM teams, and analysed our own, on topics of role allocation (specialisation), team structure, communication and supervision. We then applied the principles to bacterial systems, and adapted the design of our scientific project to include the lessons learned. See here for more information.

Gold Medal Criteria

1. Improve the function OR characterization of an existing BioBrick Part or Device (created by another team or your own institution in a previous year), enter this information in the Registry.

We improved the characterisation of eleven parts, which can be seen on our judging form. For example, see our improved characterisation of part BBa_I11012 here.

2. Help any registered iGEM team from another school or institution by, for example, characterizing a part, debugging a construct, or modeling or simulating their system.

This year we have collaborated with the UCL team. We used our antisense RNA generator software to provide them with the optimal antisense gene for knocking down their target gene. We also analysed their existing antisense gene and tried to predict its efficacy. UCL helped us out by testing our prediction on this matter with the resultant real world data on its efficacy. For more details, see this description.

We also worked with the Zurich team, providing some raw data for one of their models, which utilised some of our metabolic wires.

3. iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench, for example relating to (but not limited to) ethics, sustainability, social justice, safety, security, or intellectual property rights. Describe an approach that your team used to address at least one of these questions. Evaluate your approach, including whether it allowed you to answer your question(s), how it influenced the team’s scientific project, and how it might be adapted for others to use (within and beyond iGEM). We encourage thoughtful and creative approaches, and those that draw on past Policy & Practice (formerly Human Practices) activities.

We interviewed six iGEM teams, in order to inquire about how their teams divided their tasks, how they communicated, and how they were organised. See full description of the strategy here. We then applied the findings from our interviews to the design of a bacterial system, and adapted the design of our own scientific project accordingly. We also generalised our findings, so that they can be easily adapted for use in any system, be that a bacterial system, an iGEM team or otherwise. See the full evaluation of our strategy here.