Vilnius University students will compete in iGEM, Boston

The team of Vilnius University (VU) students will represent Lithuania in the prestigious synthetic biology competition iGEM (Eng. International Genetically Engineered Machine competition) in Boston this year. 280 teams from all over the world will present their synthetic biology projects.

 

The main goal of the Lithuanian team is to present our country as competence centre for life sciences and biotechnology and promote entrepreneurship in life sciences. The team is guided by Virginijus Šikšnys, the professor of the VU Institute of Biotechnology. Lithuanian students' team is the first of the Baltic countries, participating in the competition.

The Lithuanian team representing VU Faculties of Natural Sciences and Chemistry jointly will deliver the project on bacteria aging mechanism.

iGEM contest is an annual event in the international synthetic biology for pupils, university students and graduates. Teams consisting of different disciplines are engaged all through the summer in preparing genetically designed systems using standard biological parts called Biobricks. The specific feature of the competition is that the majority of the projects are carried out in practice - they solve urgent problems of environmental protection, medicine, manufacturing, and other areas.