Summary

''Counting'' is the action of finding the number of elements in a set. Past attempts at developing counters in cells have mostly attempted to mimic the binary methods that computers use to count. Our first counter takes a new approach to counting in cells, essentially using a mechanical rotary counter implemented on a micro scale. Each time the counter detects an input, it performs an excision and an integration directly down-stream of the active site, turning on a reporter and rotating over one "notch" on the counter.

Our second counter operates on the wholly different principle that the statistical occurrence of a rare event in a large population can be modeled and experimentally verified. Each cell in our population harbors a construct that when stimulated has a small chance of excising a terminator and expressing a reporter gene which creates cells with a distinctive phenotype. The number of these cells is thus an accurate count of the number of input stimuli.

As part of the joy of the iGEM competition is actually winning, we have worked out an algorithm based on semantic analysis of past years' wikis that selects and visualises automatically keywords unique to each team. This can be extended in the future to aid in automated analysis of past winners, as well as many other metrics about a given team.

Last but not least... We made major contributions to the nascent SynBioWorld collaborative web platform that aims at building a universal site for the synthetic biology community as a place to meet, talk, share data and resources, and stay abreast of new developments in the field.