Judging at the iGEM Jjamboree

As well spending a few weeks at Arizona State University, my State-side travels this autumn included a trip to Boston for the 2010 iGEM Jamboree. iGEM is a global undergraduate competition in synthetic biology that culminates with a ‘Jamboree’ at MIT every November. The goal for teams entering this competition is to design, build and characterize new genetic circuits that carry out specified functions. To do this, teams must use ‘BioBricks’ from MIT’s Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and must in turn contribute new, characterized biological parts to this open-source community repository.