Innovation Anthology #342:
Biochemistry students at the University of Alberta hope their invention will do for synthetic biology what Lego has done for kids toys.
Jeremy Thomas is one of the students on a team entered in this year’s iGEM competition. iGem stands for International Genetically Engineered Machines.
For the iGEM competition, Jeremy’s group has developed an educational kit for high school students. Called Genomicom, the kit gives students hands-on experience in assembling bits and pieces of genetic material into new biological forms.
As Jeremy explains, work on Genomicom has led to a radical innovation in genetic assembly.
JEREMY THOMAS: We realize that at a high school level you don’t often have weeks or months to learn something because there are a lot of areas of science that you need to cover. So we wanted to assemble pieces of DNA faster. And that’s one of the things that we’ve been looking at, getting pieces of DNA together in the time span of minutes, rather than weeks, which is what the current synthetic biology protocol that we’re following, the bio-brick protocol, takes. That usually takes hours or days to assemble things.
According to Jeremy Thomas, this new bio- byte method of assembly is faster than the current BioBrick method. And it could have further application in research labs around the world.
Thanks today to Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
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Program Date: 2010-09-28