Team:Edinburgh

Synthetic biology in general, and iGEM in particular, has long attempted to refine this process of "bridge-building". Among these efforts include the establishment of standards that can be applied across the discipline, as well as the development of standardised BioBricks and their collation in a public registry of parts. In this way, 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 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. And at a human level, bridges of understanding will transverse gaps between individual sciences and between science and the general public, by examining the use and misuse of language and concepts.

The question is... how do you think?