Gold medal and two nominations for an engineered bacteria able to produce energy from solar light; with this project the team of the University of Trento has participated, the only Italian team, at iGEM2015.
The international competition of synthetic biology was held in Boston from September 24 till September 28 with almost 300 competing teams.
The leaders are the students of the master in Science and bimolecular technologies of CIBIO - Centre for integrative biology of the University of Trento: Alessandro Turcato, Elisa Godino, Claudio Oss Pegorar, Silvia Galvan, Riccardo Corbellari, Veronica Pinamonti and Moreno Zolfo.
The students have been supported by the instructors Cristina Del Bianco, Sheref Mansy, Martin Hanczyc, Olivier Jousson, all CIBIO professors.
The University of Trento team has built a “Solar pMFC, A Microbial Fuel Cell with a light-driven E. coli engine”, a biological engineered system optimised for the production of electricity exploiting solar light.
Silvia Galvan explains: «Our project shows how synthetic biology can contribute to the development of renewable energy sources».
The team’s project, in addition to having received the gold medal, ranked among the first three on 13 (and first among all other European teams) among the best projects in the energy sector and ranked 2nd on 83 competing ones on innovative approaches in the measurement of the gene expression.
The iGEM competition (International Genetically Engineered Machine competition) is the most important international competition on synthetic biology. It was conceived by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Boston, USA), it was launched in 2003 to give room to young people, to their ideas and competences. Participating to the competition gives the opportunity to the students to directly face the research world, in a stimulating environment which involves the best Universities in the world.
The rector Paolo Collini and the Chairman of the Management Board Innocenzo Cipolletta with the CdA, complimented the team.
More information regarding the project and the team: http://2015.igem.org/Team:UNITN-Trento