Aalto-Helsinki iGEM

The Aalto-Helsinki 2021 is an international team of 10 people with a shared ambition to conduct a unique synthetic biology research project. With expertise in various fields of biosciences and technology, our team has the capability to conduct an exceptional research project that requires multidisciplinary skills, ambition, and innovation. Thus, Aalto-Helsinki is an extremely diverse team that tru

ly represents the spirit of Aalto University and University of Helsinki by bringing the various fields of study together for higher value creation. You can read more from our team and the members from our website www.aaltohelsinki.com. iGEM?
“The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) is the premiere undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition. Student teams are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at their own schools over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells. This project design and competition format is an exceptionally motivating and effective teaching method.” -iGEM website

Teams in previous years have concentrated for example in bioremediation, health and renewable energy. Teams' efforts often result in new applications and promising findings. In the autumn 2015, 245 teams from 35 different countries gather to a Jamboree in Boston to present their work and compete for prizes. In 2014 the first-ever Finnish iGEM team won the prize for the best Wiki. Synthetic biology is designing and building biological applications and systems for beneficial purposes. Genetic matter can be seen as building blocks, and combining these blocks enables creating different kinds of tailored cells or even whole, albeit simple, organisms. In this way it is possible to develop features which aren't necessarily met before in the nature. One example of a conventional synthetic biology application is to integrate a feature met elsewhere to a completely different organism. For instance, transferring a luminescence gene from marine bacteria to a plant has resulted in plants glowing in dark (http://www.glowingplant.com/). Synthetic biology is a rapidly growing field, but in Finland the companies and investors haven't yet joined in to support the growth. Our team finds it particularly important to draw attention in Finland to the the growing potential of this field. Promoting the field and for example producing educational videos are part of our goals.