Judging

Criteria 1: Competition Deliverables

UBC Vancouver’s work this year was all leading up to the world renowned 2024 iGEM Jamboree. In order to communicate this work to the judges and fellow iGEMers at this year’s competition, we completed all named competition deliverables:

• Wiki
• Presentation Video
• Judging Form
• Judging Session

Criteria 2: Project Attributions

Throughout the 2023/24 iGEM season, our team members have diligently updated and filled out their contributions to our project on our team’s Attributions Page. We are incredibly grateful for all the External Contributions made towards our project and are proud to display the support we have received from each and every contributor within the submitted form.

Criteria 3: Project Description

To get a thorough overview of nuCloud and its purpose, our Project Description page outlines the issue we tackled, our inspiration, and how we aimed to resolve it using Synthetic Biology.

Criteria 4: Contribution

Our team documented extensive wet lab, dry lab, and human practices contributions to be used by future scientists and shared with the iGEM community. Visit our Contributions page to learn more about what UBC Vancouver contributed this year.

Criteria 1: Engineering Success

This year, UBC Vancouver made a great effort to conduct and document multiple iterations of the Engineering DBTL cycle for both our wet lab and dry lab pipelines. These cycles allowed us to learn from each round of experimentation by troubleshooting and implementing feedback to optimize nuCloud’s design.

Criteria 2: Human Practices

Outside of the lab, our team spent time considering the social and ethical impacts of our work through stakeholder consultation, educational initiatives, and two-way communication with a variety of diverse and inclusive populations including students, industry and academic experts, and more. This Human Practices work was integrated into all aspects of our project to confirm the feasibility and utility of nuCloud.

Criteria 1: Excellence in Synthetic Biology

In order to meet the Gold Medal criteria for Excellence in Synthetic Biology, our team selected the following 3 special prizes from the General Biological Engineering and Specialization categories: Best New Basic Part, Best Hardware, and Best Sustainable Development Impact.

Our new basic part, BBa_K5228000, submitted to the iGEM registry encodes the thermostable terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (ThTdT) variant used to synthesize DNA in nuCloud. Our team ensured that our registry documentation is thorough and detailed, including an overview of ThTdT’s functionality and research applications and our characterization results including cloning, purification, and proof of function experiments. Figures and gel images were incorporated throughout the documentation with appropriate captions for easier transfer of knowledge. This will allow future iGEM teams to refer to our ThTdT part to inspire their projects or employ them as a part of their experimental design. We have also included our documentation on our team Wiki, visit our Part page to learn more.

The hardware development for nuCloud focused on creating affordable, scalable tools to support its downstream application as a large-scale biomanufacturing platform. We designed a modular bioreactor to efficiently grow E. coli expressing ThTdT, using cost-effective materials and custom-built control circuits to ensure accessibility for diverse stakeholder groups. Multiple iterations were tested and refined based on user feedback to enhance automation and control. Additionally, an automated microfluidic chip system was developed to facilitate solid phase DNA synthesis, incorporating low-cost pumps for reaction automation. These innovations ensure nuCloud’s compatibility with scalable, automated biomanufacturing processes.

To ensure that nuCloud is designed and developed in a sustainable manner, our team assessed whether our progress and plans align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Particular emphasis was placed on SDGs 4, 8, 9, 12, and 13. For each SDG, we identified how our project could be shaped in a way that allows it to alleviate problems that bottleneck a given SDG’s progress. Feedback from both local and global stakeholders were incorporated into this process to ensure that our thought processes and proposed project design aligned with the global demand for sustainable development. These considerations ensured that nuCloud met green standards in both its engineering and chemistry workflows.