Universitat de Barcelona
Universitat de Barcelona
11/14/2023 | News release | Distributed by Public on 11/14/2023 08:11
A team of UB students wins the gold medal in the iGEM competition on synthetic biology
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- A team of UB students wins the gold medal in the iGEM competition on synthetic biology
A team of UB students wins the gold medal in the iGEM competition on synthetic biology
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The project AlgaGenix Project designed by the students aims to contribute to the fight against water pollution caused by nitrates and phosphates derived from human activity.
News|Research
(14/11/2023)
The AlgaGenix Project, driven by a team of students of the bachelor's degrees in Biomedical Sciences, Biotechnology and Computer Engineering at the University of Barcelona, has been awarded one of the gold medals of the international competition on synthetic biology, iGEM. Also, this has been recognized as the top project on bioremediation synthetic biology. This competition, known as Grand Jamboree, is an initiative by the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation, an independent and non-profit entity dedicated to education, the progress of synthetic biology and the promotion of an open and collaborative community in this knowledge field.
The project AlgaGenix Project designed by the students aims to contribute to the fight against water pollution caused by nitrates and phosphates derived from human activity.
News|Research
14/11/2023
The AlgaGenix Project, driven by a team of students of the bachelor's degrees in Biomedical Sciences, Biotechnology and Computer Engineering at the University of Barcelona, has been awarded one of the gold medals of the international competition on synthetic biology, iGEM. Also, this has been recognized as the top project on bioremediation synthetic biology. This competition, known as Grand Jamboree, is an initiative by the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation, an independent and non-profit entity dedicated to education, the progress of synthetic biology and the promotion of an open and collaborative community in this knowledge field.
From 5 to 9 November, the competition, which reaches its twentieth edition, gathered in Paris more than 5,000 participants and 400 teams of young researchers from around the world. After twenty years of experience, this competition has received 75,000 students from 66 countries and 4,3000 projects.
AlgaGenix: bioremediation for improving polluted waters
AlgaGenix is a bioremediation project that applies synthetic biology techniques to genetically improve a study model - the microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii - to make it capable of filtering contaminated waters with nitrates and phosphates and generating high value-added compounds such as fertilizers or phytostimulants.
The project was created to alleviate the alarming lack of good-quality water in different parts of the world - Catalonia is not an exception - due to climate change and the intense human activity. With reservoirs at historic lows, the problem is getting worse and worse, and it is complicated by the poor quality of the water that is available. In this scenario, the accumulation of pollutants in reservoirs - such as nitrates and phosphates derived from agriculture, industry or sewage - generates very high pressure on water resources and has a major impact on the environmental crisis in Catalonia.
"Our project is able to revolutionize a relatively unexplored field and join the efforts made from all the fields, to solve a problem that is not tied to one region only, but it affects millions of people in the world", notes the team, formed by the students Arnau Vila, Jaume Ros, Santi Ramos, Sergi Fornós, Andrea Camí, Júlia Aguilar, Ares Font, Geovani Fuentes, Maria Roy, Oriol Capell and Pol Rubio.
AlgaGenix is a project based on the genetic modification of microalgae Chlamydomonas reindhartii to generate a strain with a greater capacity to absorb excess nitrates while increasing the production of cytokinins, a natural phytostimulant that acts as a fertilizer in most crops. The aim is that, subsequently, the extracts of these algae can be used as fertilizers. Thus, the company is working towards a circular economy and the use of resources.
In this successful initiative, the team counted on a team of counsellors formed by Gemma Marfany, professor at the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics and the rector's delegate for scientific dissemination, and the experts Jae-Seong Yang, David Alzuria, Moritz Aschern and Àngela Femat, from the Agrigenomics Research Centre (CRAG). Moreover, it received external support from the company BonÀrea Agrupa and institutional support from the UB's vice-rector's offices of Research, Students and Participation, Internationalization Policies, and Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Transfer.
In the 2022 edition, the Vesiprod project, driven by a team of students of the UB's Faculty of Biology, was awarded one of the gold medals of the iGEM competition. That initiative consisted on modifying a cellular line using genetic engineering and synthetic biology techniques with highly purifiable exosomes loaded with RNA interference, and thus treating Burkitt's lymphoma, which affects both children and adults.
Lin to the video on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNkAse1Gpz3AD8FlBm0FQNA
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