Covid doubles eating disorders in young Aragonese
26 July 2021
What happens in our brain while we sleep?
28 July 2021
A team of Unizar students participates in 'iGEM', the largest international genetic engineering competition.
Starting from scratch is one of the things that most excites the eleven students who make up Reconby, the team with which, for the first time, the University of Zaragoza is going to participate in 'iGEM', an international synthetic biology competition. After completing the course in the Biotechnology and Physics degrees, they will dedicate the summer to developing their own research project – everything included: from the conception of the idea to the search for funding and dissemination. They will present it in Paris at the end of the year. Its objective: to produce in the laboratory the great variability of antibodies that occurs naturally in living beings, but without resorting to experimental animals.
Linking the end of the exams with the dedication to this project "is hard, but we are really looking forward to it," acknowledges Víctor Sanz, who has finished 3rd year in Biotechnology and appreciates that while "at the university we do internships, this is a real project, the opportunity to contribute to knowledge"... and also to confront bureaucracy. He is one of the eleven selected among the more than 50 students from the Faculty of Sciences who applied to join the team that will participate in this prestigious competition.
Every year, more than 6.000 students and 300 universities around the world answer the call of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation. In multidisciplinary teams, they must design, build, test and measure their own genetically engineered organisms.
No laboratory animals
Living beings are capable of producing millions of antibodies to combat a multitude of pathogens. What the Reconby team aims to do is "achieve the same variability that organisms create naturally, but by synthesizing antibodies in vitro, without animals," says Sanz. They will use 'nanobodies', "the simplified version of antibodies" and, instead of using animals as antibody 'factories', they will use modified bacteria.
By random genetic recombination, seek to generate as many combinations of 'nanobodies' as possible. Once this 'assortment' of randomly synthesized antibodies is obtained in the laboratory, they will check if they are functional. Due to their ability to recognize and bind to a specific molecule, antibodies can be used to treat neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, antitumor therapy, diagnosis or detection of contaminants.
"When the classmates finish in the laboratory, it will be time to process the data and draw conclusions," says Alba Téllez, a 3rd year Physics student and in charge of mathematical modeling. She thinks that "The ideal would be to achieve great randomness and have a library of 'nanobodies' obtained without using animals, which, in addition to the ethical issue, are expensive."
In your case, They are still looking for sponsorship to complete the budget and they already have that of the companies Certest, Operon and Taisi, the Aragonese Youth Institute, the European Youth Card of Aragon, Lanau clinical supplies, Etopia and Galapagos laboratories.
Synthetic biology is not science fiction. It consists of redesigning organisms using genetic engineering techniques for different applications. It is present in insulin, pregnancy tests or covid-19 diagnosis and drug development. Professor Jesús Gonzalo Asensio, promoter of this initiative, points out that "Today we know the genomes of many viruses, bacteria and higher organisms, so the possibilities of 'playing with their genes' are almost infinite". What is done today in synthetic biology reminds one of "playing with Lego pieces (which would be genes): starting from a pile of pieces in no apparent order, it is possible to assemble them imaginatively, but rationally, to build almost anything."
An idea factory for students from all over the world
Endorsed by the prestigious MIT, 'iGEM' is a renowned international competition on synthetic biology. In its last edition, 353 teams from 40 cities on four continents participated. The challenge is "very competitive, but at the same time very stimulating for the students," highlights Gonzalo Asensio. "The 'iGEM' involves bringing together some of the coolest and most vocational students from around the world in the same event, making it a factory of ideas", says. Many of these ideas have a direct application in real life and, after the competition, the teams end up manufacturing and marketing their products.
Guillermo Nevot, a Biotechnology graduate and one of the mentors of the Aragonese team, counts in more than 150 companies that have left 'iGEM'. Among them, stands out "Gingko Bioworks, from the 2006 edition, which has given rise to a genetic engineering and molecular biology automation company; Opentrons, which has created a laboratory robot at minimum cost; or Eligo Biosciences, which wants to use phages and crispr technology to create a new generation of antibiotics.
