Team:EPF Lausanne/Judging

Judging

Take a look at our judging form for more details!

Medal criteria

Bronze medal

Criterion	Description	Link
Register for iGEM, have a great summer, and attend the Giant Jamboree.	The team from EPFL (Ecole Polythencique Fédérale de Lausanne) is successful registered for iGEM, the student competition in Synthetic Biology.	EPF_Lausanne
Complete judging form	The judging form helps iGEM judges find important information to evaluate our team's work.	Judging form
Create and share a Description of the team's project using the iGEM wiki.	All the work done by the EPFL iGEM team is documented on this website powered by Mediawiki. Have a look!	Wiki
Present a poster and a talk at the iGEM Jamboree.	EPFL iGEM team will fly to Boston on Septenber 24 in order to present the project to the judges and other iGEM teams from around the world.
Create a page on your team wiki with clear attribution of each aspect of your project.	An iGEM team is often composed of students with different backgrounds, helped by PhD students or professors. The work accomplished for this project has been clearly attributed to iGEMmers or outside collaborator.	Attributions
Document at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device central to your project and submit this part to the iGEM Registry	For S. cerevisiae we created new several new BioBricks. One of them is the dCas9 protein fused with the VP64 RNA polymerase subunit (BBa_K1723009). We also biobricked multiple synthetic gRNAs that work with dCas9 fusion protein to enable the regulation of a targeted promoter (see silver medal BioBricks).	BBa_K1723021 BBa_K1723009 BBa_K1723010 BBa_K1723011 BBa_K1723012 BBa_K1723013 BBa_K1723014 BBa_K1723015 BBa_K1723016 BBa_K1723017 BBa_K1723018 BBa_K1723019 BBa_K1723020

Silver medal

Criterion	Description	Link
Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected.	For E. coli we created new BioBricks and were able to test them experimentally (cf. Results page). For S. cerevisiae, the new BioBricks are dCas9 fused with a RNA polymerase subunit and synthetic gRNAs. In addition we biobriked a promoter from Bikard et al. and a new entirely synthetic version of it containing others gRNA targeted sites.	BBa_K1723000 BBa_K1723005 BBa_K1723002 BBa_K1723003 BBa_K1723004 BBa_K1723006 BBa_K1723007 BBa_K1723008
Submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry.	All the parts created and experimentally validated in E. coli are submitted to the iGEM Parts Registry. Note that also S. cerevisiae BioBricks (presented as a Bronze Medal requirement) are submitted to the iGEM Parts Registry.	BBa_K1723000 BBa_K1723005 BBa_K1723002 BBa_K1723003 BBa_K1723004 BBa_K1723006 BBa_K1723007 BBa_K1723008
iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench. Demonstrate how your team has identified, investigated and addressed one or more of these questions in the context of your project.	New genome editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 and dCas9 have revived one of the most fundamental debates in synthetic biology: “to which extent are we allowed to edit genomes, ours included?”. This spurred us to study this question and the larger issue of science commmunication. We begun by assessing how the general public perceives the information coming from the scientific world by organizing a survey in the streets of Lausanne. In adddition, we organized a synthetic biology day for highschool with activities ranging from practical work in the lab to an ethics debates.	Practices

Gold medal

Criterion	Description	Link
Expand on your silver medal Human Practices activity or demonstrate an innovative Human Practices activity that relates to your project.	We took the initiative to analyze the data from our public survey with a panel of eleven experts in science, ethics, politics, journalism, industry and religion. We investigated the matters of communication, interaction and responsibility in scientific research in Switzerland. Finally, we summarized the views of the experts and our own outlook in an article on our wiki.	Practices
Improve the function or characterization of a previously existing BioBrick Part or Device	Bikard et al. used dCas9-\(\omega\) in order to regulate gene expression. Their dCas9 system works with tracRNAs, while our system works with simpler gRNAs. We also added to the iGEM Parts Registry Bikard's promoter, which is an improved version of the J23117 (BBa_J23117). In addition, to test new gRNA sequences we created a fully synthetic modified version of this promoter.	BBa_K1723000 BBa_K1723001 BBa_K1723005
Demonstrate a functional prototype of your project.	Our project consisted in creating the basic element of complex logic circuits: a biological transistor-like element. We showed experimentally in E. coli that our transistor works as expected. In addition we obtained some promising results in S. cerevisiae for a similar implementation of the same concept.	Design