In the early morning of November 23, Beijing time, the 2020 International Genetic Engineering Machine Competition (iGEM) came to an end. The team from NEFU won the gold medal with the project “Bio-Optical Landmine Detection”, the fourth consecutive year that the students from NEFU have won the gold medal in this competition.

iGEM is the top international scientific and technological competition in the field of synthetic biology, as well as an interdisciplinary competition involving mathematics, computing and statistics. The competition was founded in 2003 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, and developed into an international competition in 2005. The competition requires teams with a multidisciplinary background. Through choosing their own themes, design and engineering applications, artificial biological modules are constructed with the aim of promoting the application of life science research in production and in everyday life.

This season, the NEFU team faced multiple challenges. The preparation time was compressed from 10 months to 4 months, and the format of the competition was changed from offline to online, thus increasing the amount and difficulty of the materials that need to be prepared. At the same time, as iGEM is a global event, both the defense of the competition and online communication require “jet lag”. However, NEFU students overcame all these difficulties and finally won the fourth gold medal in the competition.

The theme of NEFU’s team this year is “Bio-Optical Landmine Detection”. The project integrated multi-disciplinary expertise and developed a remotely controlled biological mine detection method based on biosensors that respond to the mine marker 2, 4, 5-trihydroxytoluene, using synthetic biology theory, 3D printing and the Internet. The project was recognized and affirmed by the judges. As the project involves a multidisciplinary approach, the team members come from several faculties of NEFU, including the College of Life Science, the School of Forestry, Aulin College, the College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Resource Utilization, the College of Economics and Management, and the College of Information and Computer Engineering. Through the “melting pot” of the iGEM competition, students broke down the barriers between colleges and disciplines, learning through interaction and making progress in the combination of ideas. The competition has greatly broadened the international vision of the team members and enhanced the communication between NEFU and the world’s top universities.