A group of seven members from the department of biotechnology, University of Pune outdid their global counterparts to win a bronze medal at the annual international genetically engineered machines (IGEM) competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, USA.
The other top medals including gold went to Cambridge University and silver to Heidelberg University, Germany.
The iGEM is one of the most prestigious competitions held globally for undergraduate biotechnology students.
The participants from UoP included Rahul Bhosale, Chinar Patil, Saravari Sathe, Mandar Pathak, Samit Watve, Swetha Srinivasan, and Amrita Oak. The team was led by advisors Chopade and Ph.D research associate Praveen K Sahu at MIT for a project presentation during the contest which was held from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2.
The seven member team from UoP had developed 26 Biobricks and submitted the same at the competition held in MIT in March.
It deals with the first ever attempt of using biological systems for stimulating the simplest computational module involving human cell to cell signaling principle. This has wide-ranging applications for development of futuristic super bio-computers
said B. A. Chopade, head, Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology (IBB) at UoP.
He said that the same project has been put on-line (http://2009.igem.org/team:IBB Pune/Parts) for the research use by scientist from all over the globe.
While showcasing the module to the Media, UoP’s acting V-C Arun Adsool said,
A part of the overall research work was not disclosed even at the competition owing to intellectual property rights (IPR) issues as the team is now seeking a US patent for its work.
The team’s performance provides a tangible result of the first-of-its-kind five-year integrated M.Sc biotechnology study programme that was introduced by the UoP in the state.
The then vice-chancellor Ashok Kolaskar was instrumental in launching the integrated biotech degree course, said Pandit Vidyasagar, director of UoP’s board of college and university development
The teams participating for the competition were from the Indian Institutes of
