Everyone's heard this a million times - iGEM is a "Synthetic Biology" competition - but what is Synthetic Biology anyway?
Avani, Wet Lab Coordinator of the IISc iGEM Team, gave a talk titled 'Synthetic Biology for Dummies.' She covered various aspects, from the history and evolution of synthetic biology, the methods it uses and the basic underlying principles, a case study, and future prospects. She demystified the subject and efficiently broke down complicated jargon, to make it an approachable and accessible talk.
The objective of the talk was to start from the complete basics and appeal to a wider audience, even those who did not have a background in Biology. IISc's culture is to never treat iGEM as something only for Biology majors - and Avani's talk was successful in showing the future iGEMers that they could help out in the technical aspects of iGEM even if they felt they didn't know much at the time!
