• GENEART supports iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines) winning teams
• For the third consecutive year GENEART provided standardized genetic building blocks for this contest
• Over 1,000 students in 103 teams from around the world designed cells with useful properties with the help of genetic building blocks
• First prize awarded to the team from Cambridge (UK) for detection system for environmental pollutants in drinking water

Regensburg, November 26, 2009 – A rapid test to examine drinking water for environmental pollutants – the goal of this year’s winning team of the iGEM contest (iGEM: International Genetically Engineered Machines) was to contrive a simple and cost efficient test method for a multitude of applications. The students from Cambridge (UK) designed bacteria, which change their color in the presence of pollutants, and do so to a varying degree depending on the concentration of the pollutant. Such tests might become useful when analyzing wells in third world countries.

Since its inauguration in 2004, the contest rapidly developed into one of the largest international science contests today. All genetic building blocks designed within the scope of the iGEM contest – more than 1,000 to date – are collected in a type of library, accessible to the students for their projects. This increases the teams’ possibilities year after year. At the same time the quality of the projects becomes more demanding as well.

Goal of the contest is to combine already existing with self-designed genetic building blocks to complex bio systems with innovative properties. As contest partner, GENEART produced genetic building blocks for the participants. The company provided 280,000 base pairs (basic building blocks of a gene) for this purpose. In addition, GENEART supported the award ceremony financially. The event was held, as during previous years, on the campus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, U.S.A.

As the worldwide leading provider of synthetic genes, GENEART does not only produce genetic building blocks for Synthetic Biology but is also involved in many publicly funded European projects in this promising market. The goal is to provide scientists with affordable genetic building blocks and thereby to further accelerate the progress in Synthetic Biology in the future. For this purpose, GENEART successfully lifted gene synthesis from a complex lab process to a highly industrialized level over the previous years. Capacities have nearly doubled every year. GENEART partially passes on cost savings from economies of scales and technological advances to its customers to deliberately open the market and increase demand.

Further information: http://2009.igem.org

Legal Information:

This document may contain estimates, prognoses and opinions about company plans and objectives, products or services, future results, opinions about these results or opinions leading up to these results. All these projections into the future are subject to risk, uncertainty and unforeseeable change outside the control of the GENEART Group. Many factors may lead to actual results, which considerably deviate from the given projections for these results.