"

From 2010.igem.org

Comments on the iGEM competition

First of all we like to state that we had a lot of fun during this project. The idea of a platform to realize own projects sparks our scientific flame. We also greatly enjoyed that the iGEM competition creates a vivid network of students and Ph.D. students not only from all around the world, but also from areas beyond the Life Sciences.

We used the competition to acquire interdisciplinary skills and also got in touch with new fields of work, like fundraising and public relations. Moreover we used the chance to get in contact to with some really nice students from Syddansk Universitet in Denmark. Together we started an intensive cooperation which lead to a magnificent gathering in Denmark at the end of September. Our whole team is excitedly looking forward to meet more charming and interesting people in Boston during the iGEM Jamborée.

Unfortunately, like in every huge project we also faced some problems. At the beginning we had quite some problems with the design of the registry. A lot of BioBricks could not be found by using the search function and we started to use Google instead since its hit rate was much higher. Moreover we would like to mention that the registry should be reviewed manually. In particular there are various problems concerning some BioBricks that are not properly characterized and/or not work as expected. This is probably due to inadequate experimental data mining as well as a unreviewed registry entries.