Team:Open Science Global

Abstract

Biotechnology can change the world or even better, protect the world we have right now. Rapid development and worldwide deployment of advanced biological technologies in various areas can help transition human civilization off of fossil energy and materials and avert a mass extinction. So, we need more experts to tackle world problems using the versatile tools of biotechnology. The barriers(time, money, resources) needed to just contribute using biotechnology is high. When we think of just the bare minimum biofoundry costs - all the biomaterials, chemical reagents, and hardware required, even that is expensive. But the good news is, the barrier is breaking down slowly through various global efforts like the FreeGenes project and OpenMTA. We as Team Friendzymes, an internationally distributed team, want to catalyse those efforts handful of steps at a time to ultimately have a frugal biofoundry in place analogous to the chaply.

We are taking part in iGEM under the alias Open Science Global and our first step in our grander vision is to produce and purify thermostable enzymes necessary for everyday use in a biotech lab. Have fun exploring our wiki to know how we are planning to do that!

If you want to see what we achieved during our project, have a look at our Contributions page. Alternatively, you can start at the beginning and find out more about our Project.

The wetware challenge

The most commonly used E. coli Requires expensive equipment to extract recombinant protein.

Can we have something better?

The software challenge

Can we tweak around the designing of the genetic constructs and tools to produce high quality and high yield proteins?

The hardware challenge

Frugal protein production/fermentation and purification requires complex techniques to master and tools not frugally acquirable.

Can we make it easier and cheaper?