Difference between revisions of "Team:Vilnius-Lithuania/Crowdfunding"

A young team of students from Lithuania, a country with a strong biotechnology track record, has become the first team from the Baltic region to enter the International Genetically Engineered Machine (later referred as iGEM)competition to address one of the greatest challenges in GMO control.

We are students who strive to become accomplished scientists. We take this dream seriously and three of our team members are taking their studies further to start their MSc at UCL in London, Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon and University of Copenhagen this autumn.

Lithuania is a small country and it is a great honor and responsibility for us to represent our university – Vilnius University, and our region at such a prestigious event. We will have to compete with scientists from top-notch institutions like Cambridge, Harvard and Stanford.

The iGEM competition is part of the largest scientific conference in the field of Synthetic Biology. This year 282 teams will be judged and awarded in Boston, home of MIT. It’s a great opportunity to showcase your research findings, but most importantly make connections that can lead to potential business ventures and knowledge sharing.

It is not a secret that our society is scared of GMOs. However, science has long held the stance that GMO's are safe to use. The cultural trend of GMO rejection is impeding the progress of research and implementation.

GMO is basically any organism, usually a bacterium, which has had its DNA edited to make it do new things – like produce a different type of protein.It is an immensely valuable technology, which has allowed us to make novel medicines, new biotechnological tools and make various materials cheaper.

On the other hand, GMOs are very complicated and adaptive systems. In a laboratory environment we can keep them stable, however, in the wild, they may mutate and transfer their genetic material to other organisms. That is what keeps people afraid.

Our goal is to tackle this specific problem – the regulation of the spread of GMOs in the environment. We named our project ColiClock because we created a bacterium with an integrated “count-down timer”, which triggers a self-destruction mechanism.

The idea would apply to cells that must have a limited lifetime outside of a laboratory environment. The mechanism is achieved by using the type I-F CRISPR-Cas system, controlled by LuxR and cI that is navigated to important genes in the genomic DNA. In addition, we aim to present and discuss this globally relevant topic with Lithuanian industries, policy makers and the general public.

The team was inspired by another Lithuanian student, Dainius Tautvaisas, who participated in the 2013 iGEM competition as part of the Edinburgh University Team. Their team went on to win a Gold Medal, which is only awarded to the best science projects.

When Dainius returned back, he got in touch with his fellow Lithuanian student-scientists to encourage them to apply for this challenging competition. Ingrida, the team leader of this year’s iGEM Vilnius team, was the first to accept the challenge. The rest of the team crystallized soon after. Ingrida and Dainius had to select only the most dedicated and motivated students from many applicants. And so the exciting journey began…

From day one we were lucky to be supported by exceptional and diverse organisations at each stage of the project - from research support, access to technology and professional expertise, to business and media help.

• L24.lt "Vilnius University students will compete in iGEM, Boston"
• 15min.lt "Lietuvos studentai kuria unikalią sistemą, padėsiančią nužudyti genetiškai modifikuotas bakterijas"
• tv3.lt "Lietuvių studentų komanda laužia ledus prestižiniame konkurse"
• Vilnius University News "VU pirmąkart atstovaujamas tarptautiniame sintetinės biologijos konkurse iGEM"

iGEM is a very prestigious competition that is extremely hard to get into and comes with high participation costs that fortunately were covered by our sponsors.

However, the participation costs cover only a half of the overall expenses, which are essential to successfully participate in the Giant Jamboree Conference. The conference is a big part of iGEM, where teams network, share ideas and create meaningful relationships. But, most importantly, at the conference we will present our work. And this is where we need your help to make most of our presence at the conference!

Our sponsors covered the major part of iGEM-associated expenses. Now there is the last bit left to make it happen. We will need additional help to cover the following costs:

• Travel & accommodation expenses (we are a team of seven, travelling to Boston to present our research findings)
• Presentation materials (anything from a poster to the team identity)
• Educational tours around schools and universities before and after the iGEM (we give lectures and presentation to fellow student-scientists)

We believe that our research can have a significant impact on our society. And our goal is to communicate our ideas to the international science community. However, we have not forgotten about you, our dear supporters, and we came up with a few ways how we can tell you more about what we do in the lab in an interactive way!

When we started this iGEM project, we thought of it as a good opportunity to showcase our laboratory work to the research community. However, during the process we realized that we have a bigger social mission to address - to educate the society about GMOs and inspire the new generations of science students to come.

And we decided to use the power of crowdfunding to achieve these goals and prove that science can be fun and is a part of everyday life.