Team:Edinburgh

From 2010.igem.org

Revision as of 13:26, 16 August 2010 by JRWK (Talk | contribs)










The 2010 University of Edinburgh iGEM team, known as the Illuminati, will approach the problem of building bridges in three distinct ways.



At a genomic level, BRIDGE is the name of a BioBrick-compatible construct used for two-step marker-less insertion and deletion of genes.



At a bacterial level, bridges of light will allow bacteria to communicate and coordinate their actions.




Modelling of the bacterial BRIDGEs will give us greater insight into and understanding of cellular mechanisms.




And at a human level, bridges of understanding will traverse gaps between individuals, disciplines, and ways of thinking.


"The engineering equivalent of Genetic Engineering is to get a bunch of concrete and steel, throw it into a river,
and if you can walk across it, call it a bridge."

- Simon Munnery, comedian.




Synthetic biology in general, and iGEM in particular, has long attempted to refine this process of "bridge-building". iGEM participants attempt to pave the way for future endeavours - the possibilities of building bridges instead of simply stumbling across them by chance, of using standardised bricks instead of having to quarry and hew individual stones, and of developing innovative new ways of creating bridges from scratch.

The question is... how do you think?