International Genetically Engineered Machine

The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition is a worldwide synthetic biology competition that was initially aimed at undergraduate university students, but has since expanded to include divisions for high school students, entrepreneurs, and community laboratories, as well as 'overgraduates'.

International Genetically Engineered Machine
Date(s)November 09 - November 13 (2017)

October 24 - October 28 (2018) October 31 - November 4 (2019)

October 28 - November 2 (2020)
FrequencyAnnually
Location(s)Boston, Massachusetts, United States
With additional events worldwide
Inaugurated2003
Most recent2020
Websitewww.igem.org
iGEM 2006 from above.

Competition details

Student teams are given a kit (so called ‘Distribution Kit’) of standard, interchangeable parts (so called 'BioBricks') at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts comprising various genetic components such as promoters, terminators, reporter elements, and plasmid backbones. Working at their local laboratories over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells.

The teams are free to choose a project, which can build on previous projects or be new to iGEM. Successful projects produce cells that exhibit new and unusual properties by engineering sets of multiple genes together with mechanisms to regulate their expression.

At the end of the summer, the teams add their new BioBricks to the Parts Registry and the scientific community can build upon the expanded set of BioBricks in the next year.

At the annual ‘iGEM Jamboree’ teams from all continents meet in Boston for a scientific conference where they present their projects to each other and to a scientific jury of ~120 judges. The judges are awarding medals, special prizes to the teams and select a ‘Grand Prize Winner’ team as well as ‘Runner-Up’ teams in each division (High School, Undergraduate and Overgraduate).

Awards & Judging in the iGEM competition

Each participant receives a participating certificate (see fig. below) and has the possibility to earn medals (bronze, silver and gold; see fig. below) with their team depending on different criteria that the team fulfilled in the competitions. For a bronze medal it is for example necessary to submit a new part to the Parts Registry, for a silver medal the team is required to document the functionality of a part and for a gold medal it is finally, among other criteria, necessary to obtain a proof-of-principle for the team's project.

In 2016 as an example, 300 teams participated in the competition from which 37% received a gold medal, 25% a silver medal, 26% a bronze medal and 12% were not awarded a medal.

In each division, the best performance in a certain aspect of the competition is honored with special prizes. The special prizes include: 'Best Project' in the respective categories (app. 10 categories), 'Best Art & Design', 'Best Hardware', 'Best Measurement', 'Best Software', 'Best Human Practices', 'Best Model', 'Best New Part', 'Best Poster', 'Best Presentation', 'Best Wiki' and others depending on the competition year. Together with individual certificates, the teams are given glass trophies for each special prize (see fig. below).

From all teams in a respective division, a number of finalists are selected (1 to 6, depending on year and division) that are allowed to present their project again in front of all Jamboree participants. From the presented projects all judges select the winner of this year's iGEM competitions, the Grand Prize Winner-team that is awarded a big metal Lego-brick (see fig. below). The winning team may keep this challenge trophy for a year until it gets awarded to the next 'Grand Prize Winner'. Participants of a 'Grand Prize Winner'-team are also given challenge coins of the respective year (see fig. below).

  • Participant's certificate
  • Gold medal sticker

History of the competition
Growth of the annual iGEM Jamboree[1]
Year No. of participants
2004
31(5 teams)
2005
125(13 teams)
2006
723(32 teams)
2007
777(54 teams)
2008
1,248(88 teams)
2009
1,840(113 teams)
2010
2,327(128 teams)
2011
2,586(165 teams)
2012
3,696(190 teams)
2013
4,027(215 teams)
2014
4,515(245 teams)
2015
5,018(280 teams)
2016
4,432(300 teams)
2017
5,400(310 teams)

iGEM developed out of student projects conducted during MIT's Independent Activities Periods in 2003 and 2004.[2][3] Later in 2004, a competition with five teams from various schools was held. In 2005, teams from outside the United States took part for the first time.[4] Since then iGEM has continued to grow, with 130 teams entering in 2010.[5] Randy Rettberg, an engineer who has worked for technology companies including Apple, Sun and BBN,[6] is the founder and director of the iGEM competition.

Because of this increasing size, in the years 2011 - 2013 the competition was split into three regions: Europe, the Americas, and Asia (though teams from Africa and Australia also entered via "Europe" and "Asia" respectively).[7] Regional jamborees occurred during October; and some subset of teams attending those events were selected to advance to the World Championship at MIT in November.[8]

In January 2012 the iGEM Foundation was spun out of MIT as an independent non-profit organization located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The iGEM Foundation supports scientific research and education through operating the iGEM competition. The same year, iGEM expanded into having not only the Collegiate division, but also competitions for entrepreneurs and high school students.

For their tenth anniversary, iGEM added new tracks to the existing ones: Art & Design, Community Labs, Entrepreneurship, Measurement, Microfluidics, Policy & Practice, and Software. Although Entrepreneurship and Software were tracks in previous years, in 2014 they were made more distinct in terms of their judging requirements.[9] Furthermore, in 2014 iGEM did not have regional jamborees, but instead hosted a giant jamboree so every team could participate in one conference in Cambridge unlike in previous years where only the regional finalists were brought to Cambridge.[10]

Broader goals

Beyond just building biological systems, broader goals of iGEM include:

  • To enable the systematic engineering of biology.
  • To promote the open and transparent development of tools for engineering biology.
  • And to help construct a society that can productively and safely[11] apply biological technology.

iGEM's dual aspects of self-organization and imaginative manipulation of genetic material have demonstrated a new way to arouse student interest in modern biology and to develop their independent learning skills.

Competition Results
Best iGEM Medal by Country - All Divisions.
  Gold Medal
  Silver Medal
  Bronze Medal


High School Division
Grand Prize Winners by Country - High School.
  1 Title
  2 Titles
  3 Titles
  4 Titles
Top High School Teams by Year
Grand Prize 2nd 3rd Complete Results
2020 TAS Taipei GreatBay SCIE iGEM 2020
2019 GreatBay SZ iGEM 2019
2018 GreatBay China [note 1] iGEM 2018
2017 TAS Taipei iGEM 2017
2016 HSiTAIWAN iGEM 2016
2015 TAS Taipei iGEM HS 2015
2014 CSIA-SouthKorea TP CC-SanDiego [note 2] TAS Taipei iGEM HS 2014
2013 Lethbridge Canada AUC Turkey CIDEB-UANL Mexico iGEM HS 2013
2012 Heidelberg LSL NC School of Sci Math CIDEB-UANL Mexico iGEM HS 2012
2011 Years prior to 2012 had no separate high school division.

Undergraduate Division
Grand Prize Winners by Country - Undergrad.
  1 Title
  2 Titles
  3 Titles
Top Undergraduate Teams by Year
Grand Prize 2nd 3rd Complete Results
2020 Vilnius-Lithuania Toulouse INSA-UPS XMU China iGEM 2020
2019 NCKU Tainan Calgary TU Kaiserslautern iGEM 2019
2018 Valencia UC San Diego SZU-China iGEM 2018
2017 Vilnius-Lithuania William and Mary Heidelberg iGEM 2017
2016 Imperial Sydney Australia SCAU-China iGEM 2016
2015 William and Mary Czech Republic Heidelberg iGEM 2015
2014 Heidelberg Imperial NCTU Formosa iGEM 2014
2013 Heidelberg TU Munich Imperial iGEM 2013[note 3]
2012 Groningen Ljubljana Paris Bettencourt [note 4] LMU Munich iGEM 2012
2011 Washington Imperial ZJU China MIT iGEM 2011 [note 5]
2010 Ljubljana Peking BCCS Bristol Cambridge Imperial TU Delft iGEM 2010
2009 Cambridge Heidelberg Valencia Freiburg Groningen Imperial iGEM 2009
2008 Ljubljana Freiburg Caltech Harvard NYMU Taipei UC Berkeley iGEM 2008
2007 Peking Paris Ljubljana UC Berkeley UCSF USTC iGEM 2007 [note 6]
2006 Ljubljana Imperial Princeton iGEM 2006
2005 Years prior to 2006 had no specific winners. iGEM 2005
2004 IAP 2004, SBC 2004
2003 IAP 2003

Overgraduate Division
Grand Prize Winners by Country - Overgrad.
  1 Title
  2 Titles
  3 Titles


Top Overgraduate Teams by Year
Grand Prize 2nd 3rd Complete Results
2020 Leiden Aachen iGEM 2020
2019 EPFL Wageningen UR iGEM 2019
2018 Marburg Munich iGEM 2018
2017 TU Delft Munich [note 7] iGEM 2017
2016 Munich [note 8] Wageningen UR iGEM 2016
2015 TU Delft BGU Israel iGEM 2015
2014 UC Davis Wageningen TU Darmstadt iGEM 2014
2013 Paris Bettencourt Bielefeld Sun Yat-sen iGEM 2013[note 9]
2012 Years prior to 2013 had no separate overgraduate division.

Notes
  1. Team from seven different high schools.
  2. Combined team from Torrey Pines High School and Canyon Crest Academy.
  3. In 2013 iGEM was divided into an undergraduate and an overgraduate section. The criterium for division was the participance of team members older than 23 years.
  4. Students were from different universities of Paris (Paris Descartes University, Paris Diderot University, Pierre and Marie Curie University).
  5. As of June 2012, the 2011 results page does not include results from the Championship Jamboree; but details can be found at the Jamboree page.
  6. 2007 had six finalists but none were selected as specific runners-up.
  7. Combined team from Technische Universität München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
  8. Combined team from Technische Universität München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
  9. In 2013 iGEM was divided into an undergraduate and an overgraduate section. The criterium for division was the participance of team members older than 23 years.

References
  1. "Previous iGEM Competitions". igem.org. Retrieved 2017-08-04.
  2. "Learn about iGEM". Retrieved 2013-05-06.
  3. Trafton, Anne. "Rewiring Cells". Technology Review.
  4. "iGEM 2005". Retrieved 2013-05-06.
  5. "Previous iGEM Competitions". iGEM. Retrieved 2011-11-12.
  6. Rettberg, R.; Dally, W.J.; Culler, D.E. (1998). "The Bleeding Edge". IEEE Micro. IEEE. 18: 10–11. doi:10.1109/MM.1998.653009.
  7. "Team List 2011". iGEM. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
  8. "Jamborees". iGEM. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
  9. "Tracks 2014". iGEM. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  10. "Giant Jamboree". iGEM. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  11. Guan, Zheng-jun; Schmidt, Markus; Pei, Lei; Wei, Wei; Ma, Ke-Ping (2013). "Biosafety Considerations of Synthetic Biology in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition". BioScience. 63: 25–34. doi:10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.7.

Further reading
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