Feature

Bangladeshi students to participate
in prestigious iGEM tournament

Mohammad Intakhar Ahmad

FOUR Bangladeshi students are going to attend one of the most prestigious competitions in the Bio-Sector to be held at MIT (USA) as members of a Swedish team. The team members include: Anna Hallerbach, Naser Monsefi, Tabassum Farzana Jahan, Laleh Kazemzadeh, Intakhar Ahmad, Tanvir Ahamed, Fahim Mahmudur Rahman, Tiezheng Mao, Sven Nelander and Per Sunnerhagen. The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) is the premiere undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition. Student teams are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at their own schools over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells. This project design and competition format is an exceptionally motivating and effective teaching method.

iGEM began in January of 2003 with a month-long course during MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP). The students designed biological systems to make cells blink. This design course grew to a summer competition with 5 teams in 2004, 13 teams in 2005 - the first year that the competition grew internationally, 32 teams in 2006, 54 teams in 2007, and 84 teams in 2008. Projects ranged from banana and wintergreen smelling bacteria, to an arsenic biosensor, to Bactoblood, and buoyant bacteria. This year over 110 teams are participating and over 1200 participants are taking part in the competition. They will all specify, design, build, and test simple biological systems made from standard, interchangeable biological parts. Teams will present their projects at the iGEM Championship Jamboree in November on October 30 to November 2, 2009.