Bronze Medal

The following 6 goals (7 goals for measurement track) must be achieved:

1. Team registration.
   • A link to our registration.
2. Complete Judging form.
   • A link to our judging form with lots of information.
3. Team Wiki.
   • A link to our wiki home page.
4. Present a poster and a talk at the iGEM Jamboree.
   • We will present a poster and a talk at the Jamboree.
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.
   • A link to our Team and Attributions page.
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.
   • A link to our Parts page.
7. Measurement Track: Participate in the Measurement Interlab Study
   • We have completed the interlab study.

All seven goals have been achieved or will be achieved during the Jamboree.

Silver Medal

In addition to the Bronze Medal requirements, the following 4 goals must be achieved

1. Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected.
2. Document the characterization of this part in the “Main Page” section of that Part’s/Device’s Registry entry.
3. Submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines).
   • The Biobrick parts and characterization can be found here: [http://parts.igem.org/wiki/index.php?title=Part:BBa_K1416000 BBa_K1416000] and [http://parts.igem.org/wiki/index.php?title=Part:BBa_K1416001 BBa_K1416001].
   • Additional characterization and utilization can be found on our ncAA kit page and our Photocage page.
   • These links provide information that should be sufficient for the above three criteria.
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.
   • The UT Austin iGEM team dealt with many "beyond the bench" issues as part of our involvement with SXSW Create this spring, particularly synthetic biology and how it can be a positive impact within a community. These issues can be found throughout our Caffeinated Coli SXSW outreach event page. Additionally, we respected the intellectual property rights of all previous research that provided inspiration for this years' projects by referencing all publications, and we were ethical in our involvement of local coffee shops by clearly and accurately informing them on the subject of synthetic biology, our lab's focus, and the science behind caffeinated coli. All coffee shops were asked for permission to publicly display the resulting caffeinated coli data, and those requests to not be identified publicly were respected (there were less than a handful).

All four goals have been achieved.

Gold Medal

In addition to the Bronze and Silver Medal requirements, any one or more of the following:

1. Demonstrate a substantial improvement over the state of the art in cost, efficiency, precision, resolution, and/or other relevant capabilities of your measurement technique.
   • Information pertaining to this can be found on our ncAA Kit page -introduction/motivation and in the results, discussion, and conclusion sections.
2. Increase the ease of accessibility and portability of methods to other laboratories of a new measurement technique of your choosing.
   • Information pertaining to this can be found on our ncAA Kit page -introduction/motivation and in the results, discussion, and conclusion sections.

We believe we have achieved both of these goals, only one of which is needed.

Measurement Track Awards

There are a lot of exciting Parts in the Registry, but many Parts have still not been characterized. Designing great measurement approaches for characterizing new parts or developing and implementing an efficient new method for characterizing thousands of parts are good examples.

We are eligible for Best Characterization Project and Best Innovation in Measurement.

We would hope to receive consideration for these awards given our creation of a standard kit for assessing ncAA synthetase/tRNA pairs. Our kit is a first step in bringing this exciting field into iGEM. We have created an easy to use standardized kit that allows for the widespread characterization of synthetase/tRNA pair parts, which until now has been sorely missing from the field. As part of our project, we have characterized seven ncAA synthetase/tRNA pairs, demonstrating that while some pairs are very good with high fidelity and high efficiency, other ncAA synthetases have exceedingly low fidelity, raising the question as to whether they are suitable for applications relating to synthetic biology.