Why iGEM is the Place to See the Future of Biotech
Every year, hundreds of student-led teams join iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. It's the heart of global synthetic biology and a great place to scout for the next big thing.
Transcript
There's a lot of ways to stay on top of emerging biotechnologies. You can read academic journals, attend conferences, follow influencers on social media.
But none of those are going to be as fun as iGEM - either as a team member or a fan. Today we're talking about iGEM and why it gets ahead of the curve on new biotech.
For the uninitiated, let's start with the basics. iGEM is the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. Every summer, teams of students get together to develop student-led synbio projects. They design DNA, engineer organisms, do experiments - essentially complete biotech R&D projects compressed into one summer. In the fall, the teams come together at the Grand Jamboree to meet, present their work, and compete for prizes.
iGEM started in 2003 at MIT in Boston. In 2023, the 20th anniversary, the Grand Jamboree was at this gigantic convention center in Paris. I'm talking about 400 teams from all around the world. 4000 attendees. Hundreds of judges from industry and academia. Just a huge festival for all things synthetic biology.
I've been going to iGEM for more than 10 years and I always find something new. Pretty often, something that I notice first at iGEM will go on to become the next big thing in biotech.
Take CRISPR, for example. The breakthrough publication on Crispr gene editing came out in August of 2012. Less than a year later, I counted 12 iGEM teams working with CRISPR-Cas9 systems. You had UCSF in California working on microbiome engineering. You had Chiba University in Japan doing knockdowns for bacterial magnetism. Paris Bettencourt in France trying to reverse antibiotic resistance. MIT working on cell-to-cell communication.
It was the full range of potential applications. These projects were still in early stages, but everywhere you looked, the tech was working. At that moment in history, iGEM was arguably the place on earth to see how CRISPR was going to be transformative across many different kinds of biotech.
Another example: plastics. Microplastics have been big in the news since about 2020. But iGEM has been working on tech for plastic bioremediation since at least 2012. That was the year when a team from London developed a plan to aggregate microplastics in the ocean into an island called the Plastic Republic. Very fun concept.
In 2016, an academic group discovered a bacterium that breaks down PET, a polyethylene plastic. An iGEM team from Harvard took the PETase enzyme from that organism and added its DNA sequence to the BioBricks registry. In the years since, that enzyme has been reused by other teams. It's a genetic part that can be improved and deployed in other projects.
And this is just one enzyme for one environmental application that happens to be in the news today. The iGEM parts registry is huge. It probably isn't surprising to you that young people care about the environment. But the sheer energy that young scientists are putting into green tech is a force to be reckoned with.
Academic departments, industry conferences and VC pitch competitions are great, but iGEM has a unique place in the biotech ecosystem. Why is that?
Like nowhere else, iGEM brings that youthful energy and optimism. In the tech world, the college-aged founder is so common it's a cliché. In biotech, that is not the norm. Now I don't want to get into a whole thing about youth vs. experience and the reasons why most biotech leaders are crazy old. I'm just saying I'm glad bio made a space that belongs to the next generation.
Unlike most biotech, iGEM runs rapid development cycles. A typical academic research project plays out over years. A year to apply for a grant. A year to hire a postdoc or PhD student. 3-5 years to do the project. A year to publish. In iGEM, that timeline is compressed from years to months. Fail quickly. Fast iteration. Try it and see.
Finally iGEM teams are called on to deliver the complete package. The teams are scored for their ability to make the science work and also to solve a problem in the real world. They bring applications, product designs and business models. They get rewarded for thinking deeply about the social and ethical implications of their work, which the competition calls human practices. Who is this helping? What are the risks? Why is this good for the world?
That feeling of care and striving for good is everywhere in iGEM. Not just in the sense of developing biology safely and responsibly. But also of just pure enthusiasm and joy for everything that biology can do. The future that you can see at iGEM is bright - that's why I keep coming back.