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French students genetically engineer machines to win global competition

Cleaning infected hospital wastewater and developing a communication system for bacteria, two projects developed by students from Université Paris-Saclay have won a worldwide synthetic biology competition.

The two teams built genetically engineered systems using biological parts called BioBricks.

One team, GO Paris-Saclay, addressed the problem of cytotoxic anticancer drugs released from hospital wastewater. They focused on the biotransformation of a widely used anticancer drug, methotrexate (MTX), and developed a synthetic Escherichia coli strain, called ‘MethotrExit’, that drastically removes MTX from wastewater. Since some BioBricks are slightly toxic, the team also developed a device to tackle this.

The other team, Evry Paris-Saclay, worked on a communication system that allows bacteria to send specific signals for particular tasks. Aiming to develop a new system for cell-to-cell communication in E. coli, totally different from the native system, peptides (amino acid polymers) were used to construct new communications between bacteria. There are many uses for this – from more accurate diagnosis of complex diseases, to better identifying environmental pollutants.

Evry Paris-Saclay was also nominated for the “Best New Composite Part” Special Prize.

The competition is run by the iGEM Foundation – an independent non-profit dedicated to advancing synthetic biology, education, competition, and collaboration – and gives students the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology by tackling everyday issues facing the world. Every year nearly 6,000 people take part.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Université Paris-Saclay .