Judging Criteria

Bronze

We have registered our team, had a great summer, and plan to have fun at the Regional Jamboree.

We have set up a team wiki.

We have completed the judging form.

We have a poster and presentation , which we will be presenting at the Jamboree.

We have designed, built and characterised several new functional Biobricks including:

[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149051 BBa_K1149051]: an optimised bioplastic producing operon (hybrid promoter phaCAB)
[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149010 BBa_K1149010]: a bioplastic degradation enzyme
[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149002 BBa_K1149002]: encodes carboxylesterase that breaks down ester bonds in polyurethane (PUR-ESTCS2)
[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149050 BBa_K1149050]: Bdh2 3HB dehydrogenase enzyme
[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149020 BBa_K1149020]: a blue chromoprotein under the control of a constitutive promoter

We have characterised several existing Biobricks including:

[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K934001:Experience BBa_K934001]: a bioplastic producing operon (native phaCAB).
[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K639003:Experience BBa_K639003]: a stress induced biosensor.
[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K206000:Experience Part:BBa_K206000]: pBAD Strong promoter.

Silver

We have designed, built and characterised several new functional Biobricks and submitted characterisation data to the parts registry see list above

Human Practices

We have explored environmental, societal, ethical, political and safety aspects of our project, including how our project would fit into the current UK waste management industry.

We visited Powerday, a recovery and recycling centre in West London to learn about waste management in the UK. The visit directly influenced our project and even provided a source of recyclable waste which we used in our experiments.

"The waste and resource management sector is in a period of unprecedented change and so is a fertile ground for innovation and I look forward to seeing how this project develops... Finding new ways of recovering plastics will play a part in the resource efficient supply chains of the future". Simon Little (Powerday, Sales & Marketing Director)

We visited local government, the Greater London Authority (GLA) at City Hall to learn about the Mayor of London's vision for recycling. We learned that our technology would complement the Mayor of London's recycling strategy.

"Imperial iGEM team's research project to extract valuable substances from non-recyclable waste that can then be used to make new products sits well with achieving the Mayor’s vision." Doug Simpson (Principal Policy and Programme Officer, Waste and Energy Team)

We assembled a panel of experts, including synthetic biologists, social scientists and representatives of the bioplastics industry. We discussed at length the core societal, ethical and technological challenges surrounding our project, as well as broader aspects about the future of bioplastics, and synthetic biology. A video is published on our wiki. Our panel discussion framed our perspectives on how we could communicate that waste is a valuable resource and whether synthetic biology is an appropriate waste management technology. We also thought about the safety implications of how our technology would be industrially implemented.

Our team communicated with an array of individuals and organisations that are critical of synthetic biology, but supportive of increased recycling and the development of a more sustainable society. Some of our discussions are captured on our Wiki. From our interactions we learned that waste management is a social as well as technological challenge. These discussions gave us the idea to promote our project across Imperial in a novel way, our posters became fun recycling awareness posters (see iGEM community pages)

We completed and submitted our safety documentation and published general safety information on our wiki safety page

Gold

Improved the function of an existing part [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K934001:Experience BBa_K934001 native phaCAB]. We created a [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149051 BBa_K1149051 hybrid promoter phaCAB] which significantly increases the bioplastic production of this part. We designed our improved version of this part based upon our modelling data.

Collaborated and supported the Yale iGEM team. For our collaboration we sent the team our proteinase K Biobricks, so that Yale could degrade bacterial synthesised Poly Lactic Acid [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149007 BBa_K1149007] [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149008 BBa_K1149008]

Providing ongoing advice to St Pauls London iGEM High School team. The team visited our iGEM lab for a tour and to talk about their project. We tweeted photos from our visit and you can see one here

Modelling collaboration with UCL, to predict how proteinase K (our plastic degradation enzyme) can also break down Beta-amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease UCL Modelling_beta-amyloid

For more collaborations see our collaborations page

Novel Human Practices

Utilised real world mixed waste in our experiments, sourced from our visit to Powerday, a recycling centre in West London.

We developed a method of painting with highly cultured E. coli. Our paintings are incredibly popular and have inspired the general public to have discussions with us about our project and SynBio as a whole. Our paintings will also be submitted to a SynArt exhibition in collaboration with the ATOMS Turkiye iGEM team. See the full set here