IGEM: The Competition on Synthetic Biology

Abstract

The international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition is one of the most popular competitions in the area of synthetic biology, with a focus on students’ involvement in the field of synthetic biology. The competition is now organized by the iGEM foundation, a nonprofitable organization that is independent of universities. iGEM is not only a competition but also a resource: one side of such resource is about education for students, and another side is about the fact that the plasmids from iGEM teams would normally be deposited to registry ("Registry of Standard Biological Parts") for others’ utilization. These efforts would be very beneficial toward a standardized platform for either top-down or bottom-up synthetic biology simply because these are the building blocks of more complex synthetic biology systems. These plasmids have been stored in the iGEM foundation’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts sample bank. In this chapter, we will introduce iGEM competition and its relation to synthetic biology. We will also show some typical cases of iGEM competition.