Recently, good news came from Boston, USA, as the NEFU-China Undergraduate Team won the Silver Award of the “2016 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM).” NEFU has participated in this competition three times, and each time has won the silver award.

iGEM is a top international scientific event for college students in the field of synthetic biology, launched by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Since 2003, each iGEM competition not only has had considerable international influence, but also became a platform for biological scientific innovation and communication for the international undergraduate students.

This year our team’s competition project is “Magnetosome: a new efficient and handy tool for protein purification”, using the magnetosome produced by magnetotactic spirillum AMB-1 to purify the recombinant protein with spytag label expressed by Escherichia coli. The iGEM organizing committee gave high evaluation to our project. NEFU-China Team used the concept of molecular biology and the means of genetic manipulation to attain the goal of efficient, specific and rapid purification of a protein. This team was formed in November, 2015, with the members from the College of Life Science, the College of Forestry and the College of Science respectively. Under the guidance of Sui GuangChao, Wang Yu and Cui Daizong, the professors from the College of Life Science, having gone through training, topic selection, experiments, communication and practical simulation for 11 months, the team finally completed the competition project.

Since the formation of the first NEFU-China Team in 2014, with the strong support from the leaders in charge, the Office of Educational Administration, the Institute of Science and Technology, the College of Forestry, the College of Science and other relevant departments, as well as the wisdom and strength of many teachers and students, it has made great achievements and won the silver awards three times. In the competition, the members’ abilities in learning, research, innovation and teamwork have been fully improved. After graduation, most of the previous NEFU-China Team members choose to continue their studies at universities or research institutions. iGEM has laid a good foundation for their subsequent scientific research.