Overview

In the past few years, the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (IGEM) has swept through the world, especially in American, Asian and Europe. As we can see from the Figure 1, since 2003, the number of IGEM team has increased 24.38% around the world; moreover, there is a boom in the number of team in Asian from 0 to 78, and in China from 0 to 49. It is evidently that IGEM is developing rapidly as well as steadily and becoming more and more popular.

Figure 1. Number of IGEM teams. The blue, red and green curves display the growth tendency about number of IGEM teams of Worldwide, Asian and China, respectively.

It is the first time that SCUT has participated in the IGEM. Since March 2012, besides routine experiment about our project, we have been making great efforts to introduce synthetic biology to the school of bioscience and bioengineering and through hardwork, we do expand the influence of IGEM. In other words, Bioscience and IGEM are known by more people. Consequently, it can be foreseen that more talents are going to be attracted to join in us, join in IGEM next year. So, this year, we have developed a novel theme for human practice of SCUT, “IGEM Everywhere”.

In order to popularize IGEM and synthetic biology, all possible means have been tried, including holding bio-model competition，participating the IGEM workshop of southern district of china, helping freshmen be familiar with our project and experiment or sharing our awkward problems and experience with some colleges.

Additionally，we have come up with some novel approach of human practice in brainstorm of IGEM. After a presentation of synthetic biology and IGEM, we can screen out some applicants and subsequently set up a pre-IGEM class. In this class, there haven’t heavy course load and we just arrange some interesting presentation about SB and new biotechnology regularly. In short, this class is the club for SBers and genius joining in it to learn and share information together with each other. This method is not only to propagandize the SB and IGEM but also to meet the requirement of these people who is interested in SB and IGEM and would like to make some experiments.

Sincerely hope that “IGEM everywhere” project could expand the horizon and increase the knowledge of synthetic biology and IGEM of gifted students of school of bioscience and bioengineering of SCUT.