IISER Teams Win Gold Medals At iGEM 2021; Pune, Berhampur Among Five Indian Groups

New Delhi: Undergraduate students of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, teamed up to win the gold medal at the latest edition of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) contest held recently.

Also, IISERs — Kolkata, Berhampur and Tirupati, and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru — teams have also won gold medals this year among the 169 international teams.

For the winning project, the Pune team developed a sustainable model for synthesising chemical compounds utilising two bacterial strains. The students’ aim was to remove both the carbon-emitting petrochemicals and resource-intensive plant biomass, reported The Indian Express.

During the past few months, 12 students worked on the project titled ‘Synbactory’ and presented the prototype of the bacterial co-culture to produce Butanol, which can be harmful to the skin and cause rashes and irritation. The iGEM 2021 competition was held between November 4 and 14.

The IISER, Berhampur, students devised a rapid diagnostic tool kit for early detection of tuberculosis while the Kolkata group developed a novel solution to address the subclinical bovine mastitis which is rampant in the dairy industry.

The IISER, Tirupati, in its winning project, developed environment-friendly contraceptives using commensal bacteria of the fallopian tubes.

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