Five Engineering at Illinois undergraduates are among a group of students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who earned a Gold award and a Top 15 ranking at the North America regional competition of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation's "jamboree."
Written by Susan McKenna
Five Engineering at Illinois undergraduates are among a group of students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who earned a Gold award and a Top 15 ranking at the North America regional competition of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation's "jamboree."
iGEM team in Toronto: (l to r) Arnav Rana (biology), Ashley Moy (BioE), Will Dolatowski (ABE), Blake Wilhelmsen and Margaret Barbero (BioE).Four bioengineering (BioE) students on the Illinois iGEM team include Margaret Barbero, Blake Wilhelmsen, Rachel Walker and Ashley S. Moy. Also on the Illinois team are Arnav Rana (biology), Xinyi (Cathy) Guo (molecular and cellular biology), and Will Dolatowski (agricultural and biological engineering).
The Illinois students are working on a project that is expected to have an impact on lowering the incidences of heart disease. They are focused on cardiovascular disease, as it is the No. 1 killer in the United States. It is highly associated with plaque buildup in the arteries, a condition known as atherosclerosis. The team aims to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis by making alternative pathways for substances that cause the plaque buildup so those substances are neutralized and no longer interfere negatively with the body.
In addition to being one of 28 teams earning the Gold award, the Illinois students' Top 15 ranking at the regionals allows them to advance to the international iGEM competition in November at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Regional Jamborees also were held recently in Asia, Latin American and Europe.
The iGEM competition, established by MIT in 2006, highlights student-run research in synthetic biology and promotes the open development of engineered biological tools and the productive and safe use of them to aid in human health. The annual synthetic biology competition was held in Toronto Oct. 4-6.