FSU is participating in its second International Genetically Engineered Machine's (iGEM) team competition. iGEM is a synthetic biology competition for university students where multidisciplinary teams work together to design, build, and test, a unique system using interchangeable biological parts and standard molecular biology techniques. The iGEM competition, this year, is being held in October at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the annual Jamboree.
This year FSU's team is working towards discovering if sound can be used to induce gene expression in engineered E. coli. We are identifying promoters that may be pathways that respond to sound and using these selected promoters to design new genetic devices that will generate chromogenic or fluorescent reports when a cell is exposed to sounds.