Science Life

At Long Last, Freezable Fruit Flies

How To Create a Cool iGEM Project

One summer, a team of undergraduate students decided they were going to win the grand prize at the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition (iGEM). They figured that doing this would be challenging, but the approach was straightforward. They set out to simply create the coolest project that any of the judges or competing teams had ever seen. Alas, after weeks and weeks of hard work, their project turned into a spin-off of their advisor’s work, ended up looking too much like someone else’s project, and suffered from lack of team morale which dissolved by the end of the summer. In the end, another team with a really cool project won the grand prize at the jamboree.

This proverbial team made two critical mistakes. First, they decided at the beginning of the summer that they were going to win the grand prize at iGEM. Second, and perhaps most importantly, they attempted to deliberately create a cool project.

When we set out to make something “cool” we often look for an impressive precedent and imitate it. The idea, then, is inspired entirely by something that has been done already, or some external person’s idea. When we deliberately try to make something creative, we sometimes ironically default to copying a creative thing. Why do so many of us default to this behavior? It’s easy to fall back when you are not propped up by a genuine passion or purpose.

What’s more, we try to win when we are afraid of losing.

This doesn’t just happen to iGEM students, it also happens to professional scientists in academia and industry.

So what makes a project really cool, instead of just an attempt to win something? Inspiration. Ask yourself this, what else besides the desire to impress the judges and win a trophy is motivating your project? If you don’t win anything, will your project change the world? When your supporters abandon it, will you still want it to succeed? If you aren’t being driven by an urgent cause, are you having fun?

Take a look at major pioneers and leaders in Synthetic Biology today. What was Drew Endy doing before he became a synthetic biologist? How about Tom Knight, Pam Silver, Randy Rettburg, or Craig Venter? I mention these scientists because while learning about their backgrounds, I keenly remember my delight at discovering some unexpected fact about their path, a moment of inspiration, or a huge risk they took because they knew that what they would accomplish would change the world. The result of their work was something really cool.

Should we just give up on competition and ignore all the rules? No, just understand what the rules are there for. Although the iGEM track titles and some awards suggest inspirational grand challenges, for the most part the rules are not there to inspire you. In iGEM, the rules help you to package your work so that diverse projects can be compared fairly and measurable success can be rewarded by the organization. Furthermore, some iGEM rules are tailored to help you make comprehensible, meaningful, and useful contributions to open-source bioengineering (i.e., The MIT Registry of Standard Biological Parts).

Don’t work on an iGEM project because it will get you an award. Do it because you know it’s the only real way you are going to make a positive impact on the world. If you don’t feel in your heart that this is true, you need to shift directions or work on a different project.

Be inspired.

Learning by building…a new lab

September 5th marked my official transition from a postdoctoral research fellow to an assistant professor with my own lab. A very empty lab. No equipment, no students, not even one of those ubiquitous half-sized refrigerators or a biohazard waste bin.

So I figured I’d just dive into my big pile of start-up cash and go shopping for equipment and supplies.

“Oh wait, how do I order stuff?”

Every school has it’s own system. Fortunately, the culture of my program and department encourages undergraduate students to volunteer for professors to help the student warm up to lab culture and to give the professor an opportunity to get to know his/her potential future undergrad research fellows. I got an undergrad registered to use the online ordering system and she orders everything I add to a Google doc spreadsheet we share. My student rocks.

“What brand of gloves was I using back at my old lab? I loved those gloves.”

It dawned on me that making an inventory of all of he stuff I loved but took for granted at the old homestead would have been really helpful.

“An ice bucket costs HOW much? You’ve got to be f****ing kidding me.”

I’m sure my sticker shock provides my undergrad volunteer with endless entertainment.

“This thing looks kind of odd. This isn’t what I was expecting.”

I learned not to expect to reproduce the old lab. There are a million slightly different versions of the generic things you use in lab and items get outdated or discontinued.

Some interesting stuff (that you’ll probably never learn as a student or postdoc) happens during the complicated dance involving medium/ large equipment purchases.

- Meet your sales representative out on the floor
- Schedule an instrument demo
- Plan the trial run, don’t forget to invite your lab neighbors
- Negotiate length of time to keep the machine, new machine pricing, spin your partner round and round
- Explain why you’re not buying from a local or small business by writing a sole source justification (e.g., This company is the only one in the universe that makes this machine and I need it)
- Submit your quote, tax exempt form, and justification to the buyer
- Wait and wait…5 6 7 8

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate that just having the opportunity to build a lab from scratch is exciting. If this process turns out to be the most exciting part of my career for a while, I shouldn’t ruin it by focusing too much on the process.

“Greetings, new -150 C cryogenic freezer! I christen thee, Burrrt. Burrrt Reynolds.”

I’m going to have fun with this.

iGEM 2010: and the human practices award goes to…

Like a nervous parent in the bleachers at a little league softball game, I sat at the edge of my seat, trying my best to keep my composure as the awards were announced for this year’s International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition. Like any competitive player, I was rooting for my home team, but I also had a good feeling of who among the many contestants was a true competitor.

Then the results were announced and I was left perplexed.

The Human Practices award honors the efforts to bring synthetic biology closer to people’s lives in a tangible and meaningful way. For that reason, I was utterly confused that the award-winning project consisted of a privileged group coming down from the hillside, so to speak, to save underprivileged brown people from their tragic lot in life, and snapping public relations photos for display. A clever new technology to save the victims from disease was proposed, which basically leaves those people dependent upon on the graciousness of the privileged scientists.

What kind of message do we send when “touch and go” style humanitarian efforts, notoriously common and convenient to privileged people, are rewarded on an international stage, while in the very same competition projects that aim to actually empower people to participate in science go unrecognized? It’s a bit twisted and unsettling in my opinion.

It’s the 21st century and colonialism is old news. Do we really still think that approach is noble? This critique may seem harsh, but I am very concerned about this and it really needs to be said. The iGEM award decisions influence how future teams will do science and how they will approach human practices. We need to make sure we’re steering budding scientists in the right direction.

With that said, I’m inspired to recognize the three human practices that I feel truly reflected the spirit of empowering people by allowing them to choose what to do with science to better or sustain their own well-being.

1. Art Science Bangalore: This group presented their efforts to spark a “jugaad biology” movement in their local community in India. Jugaad is defined as ‘a hack to get around or deal with a lack of or limited resources…things poor but clever people do to make the most of the resources they have.’ This is the true spirit of empowerment.

2. Harvard University (conflict of interest disclosure: my home team): The iGarden, a personalized genetic toolkit for creating your own hypoallergenic and nutritionally enhanced veggies, had implications for taking control of genetically modified foods from the hands of large companies and putting it into the hands of the people who need it. The idea was so powerful and so tangible, a USDA official who had volunteered as a judge struggled with the implications as he spent a very long time discussing the project with the students.

3. University of Alberta: This is the closest I’ve seen any team come to making and distributing an affordable toolkit that allows high school students to do gene splicing. They put a lot of thought into every detail, from DNA assembly to liquid measuring pipettes.

Perhaps these ideas were just a little too big and a little too real for iGEM. Over the past four years I’ve been a participant, I’ve noticed that the big award winners tend to look the same. It’s unlikely that things will change much. Perhaps this is a sign that the time has come for other student bioengineering competitions…and what an interesting human practices project that would be.