On My Experience as an IGEMer

In November, I had a travel experience as magnificent as the ones described in Gulliver’s Travels. Everything was exciting, inspirational, and mind-blowing. I felt honored to take part in the IGEM competition (International Genetically Engineered Machines) as one of the members of the team BGIC-Union, a huge synthetic biology group arranged by MIT annually that allows high school and undergraduate students to create innovative projects.

On the day of the opening ceremony, we were excited as we waited in the Hynes Convention Center, watching the cold Boston wind blowing past swarms of people. Each team had its own uniquely colored uniform, and soon the whole space was brightened up with a rainbow of colors.

Like the variety of colors, stunning ideas were everywhere in the convention center. Tokyo Technology University from Japan came up with “Coli-sapiens’ (creating co-existing human and bacteria cells), Tsing Hua University from China made a computer game from E. coli by modeling them in a computer simulation, and many other teams used multiple approaches to manufacture better disease detection methods and to solve environmental issues. Although some of these ideas were very scientifically complex, we still enjoyed being at the convention. The projects from each team were also introduced through poster sections.

In the poster sections, IGEMers could closely examine their opponents’ work. People could pass by a poster, listen to its explanation, and ask any questions they had. By the end of the day, I had already become an expert at explaining and advertising: “Our group is from Shenzhen, China and we are focusing on the detection of lung cancer by simply using paper chips.” I smiled as brightly as I could while handing out mini posters and introductions of our project, expressing my ideas confidently and effortlessly.

A scientist’s life is composed not only of rigorously digging through scientific papers, long nights of experiments, and endless article writing, but also of the process of enjoying science and receiving inspiration from other people’s work. We’ve had to sleep in the laboratory, testing the concentration of bacteria every hour. We also repeatedly wrote and rewrote our articles, sending emails to every possible expert with suggestions. Those were hard times, but it was all worthwhile when we could present the projects we made to the world.

Many of the projects in this competition are still far from realizable in the real world. But although some of the fabulous ideas were only presented as designs without an actual product, their mere existence has been influential. Who would even have considered the impact of genetic engineering in the past? Just imagine what wonders all these innovative projects will lead to 20 years from now.