Who are we?

Istanbul Technical University iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition) Team is a volunteer competition group formed by mostly second and third year Molecular Biology and Genetics students in Istanbul Technical University. Our goal is to represent our university and country in a best way by attending to most prestigious “synthetic biology” competition called iGEM. This attempt will not be limited with only attending this year; it will be a start for showing our ambition and passion to be able to attend to next competitions. Synthetic Biology is a sub-branch of biology that aims to modify available organisms or create new complex biological structures for the benefit of humanity and approaches to biology with an engineering perspective; it is a branch of science that use the techniques from molecular biology and genetics. By this way, iGEM helps both students to be informed about this area and to contribute to science by prepared projects. This students-based competition has a long and devoted process that includes helps and probations of advisors who are instructors in the institute. In our university, Molecular Biology and Genetics department has three student laboratories and also there is a Molecular Biology-Biotechnology & Genetics Research Center (MOBGAM) founded by contributions of Dr. Orhan Öcalgiray and state. There are quite good equipped laboratories belonging to department instructors; likewise, various researches are carried out in different branches in this research center. By adapting molecular biology and genetics techniques into functional engineering area, biotechnological and nanobiotechnological researches are carried out in this center. This research center founded in 2004 provides unique opportunity for researching on both interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary areas by also effort of researchers in the center. As a candidate for future scientists, we would like to take first step to on this competition way by using these quite equipped laboratories and other opportunities provided by university. We would like to complete our deficiencies by your support and represent our university and country in a best way in this competition.

What is IGEM?

iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) is the competition that has been organized in MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) by IGEM foundation since 2004 and welcomed predominantly undergraduate students.