About

iGEM

iGEM, standing for International Genetically Engineered Machine, is the largest synthetic biology competition in the world where multidisciplinary teams are working on designing techniques and building biological devices that will bring novel solutions to everyday issues facing the world. By working on the projects, teams are contributing to an open registry of standard biological parts and the whole competition is stimulating synthetic biology research and entrepreneurship in biotechnology. Teams are also encouraged to collaborate with leaders in the industry and with each other, for the exchange of knowledge and skills. By virtue of marketing and human practices, students are motivated to bring synthetic biology outside the lab by interacting with stakeholders, local communities, schools and many more. Learn more about iGEM on the official page:

iGEM Stockholm

The iGEM Stockholm team is driven entirely by the team as an extracurricular project and participating students can come from any university in Stockholm. For good project management, the team is usually divided into subteams which are responsible for different parts of the project. Sometimes people are in only one subteam while some can be in multiple subteams, but these roles give a good picture of what kind of responsibilities a typical Stockholm team has:

Leader

Responsible for recruiting and leading the team, and planning the upcoming iGEM year, making sure that official requirements and deadlines are met.

Wetlab

Planning and carrying out the experimental components of each year's project.

Drylab

Constructing the computational aspects of the project (simulations, modelling, etc.).

Human Practices

Planning and hosting project-related community outreach and integrating feedback from the community to direct the project.

Media

Creating promotional material like social media posts, presentations, posters, websites, etc.

Finance

Managing the finances of the project and looking for funds/sponsorships from different organizations (universities, companies, etc.)

Join iGEM Stockholm

Applications for the 2025 team are closed. Until next year, follow the team on social media (listed at the bottom of the page) to see what their journey is like! Applications will open again next year, so stay tuned...

Teams

This year iGEM Stockholm is doing a project on guanine biosynthesis using gene overexpression and knockdown in E. Coli bacteria using plasmids, with the aim to provide a better alternative to the commonly used mineral - mica. Mica is utilised in many cosmetics, providing the pearlescent effect in eyeshadows, powdered foundations, highlighters etc. However, many ethical and environmental issues surround the mining of mica, including the large exploitation of child workers in countries such as India and Madagascar, and deforestation to provide new areas for mines. Some cosmetics also use fish scales to produce a similar effect, which require extensive extraction processes to isolate the guanine and produce a low yield of product, not to mention it is also not vegan-friendly. Therefore with the use of synthetic biology, we hope our project will be able to reduce the demand for the labour-intensive mining of mica, and the extensive extraction of guanine from fish scales.