International Genetically Engineered Machine

Student teams are given a kit (so called ‘Distribution Kit’) of standard, interchangeable parts (so called 'BioBricks') at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts comprising various genetic components such as promoters, terminators, reporter elements, and plasmid backbones. Working at their local laboratories over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells.

The teams are free to choose a project, which can build on previous projects or be new to iGEM. Successful projects produce cells that exhibit new and unusual properties by engineering sets of multiple genes together with mechanisms to regulate their expression.

At the end of the summer, the teams add their new BioBricks to the Parts Registry and the scientific community can build upon the expanded set of BioBricks in the next year.

At the annual ‘iGEM Jamboree’ teams from all continents meet in Paris for a scientific expo event and conference where they present their projects to each other and to a scientific jury of ~400 judges. The judges award medals and special prizes to the teams and select a ‘Grand Prize Winner’ team as well as ‘Runner-Up’ teams in each division (High School, Undergraduate and Overgraduate).

Each participant receives a participating certificate (see fig. below) and has the possibility to earn medals (bronze, silver and gold; see fig. below) with their team depending on different criteria that the team fulfilled in the competitions. For a bronze medal it is for example necessary to submit a new part to the Parts Registry, for a silver medal the team is required to document the functionality of a part and for a gold medal it is finally, among other criteria, necessary to obtain a proof-of-principle for the team's project.

In 2016 as an example, 300 teams participated in the competition from which 37% received a gold medal, 25% a silver medal, 26% a bronze medal and 12% were not awarded a medal.

In each division, the best performance in a certain aspect of the competition is honored with special prizes. The special prizes include: 'Best Project' in the respective categories (app. 10 categories), 'Best Art & Design', 'Best Hardware', 'Best Measurement', 'Best Software', 'Best Human Practices', 'Best Model', 'Best New Part', 'Best Poster', 'Best Presentation', 'Best Wiki' and others depending on the competition year. Together with individual certificates, the teams are given glass trophies for each special prize (see fig. below).

From all teams in a respective division, a number of finalists are selected (1 to 6, depending on year and division) and allowed to present their project again in front of all Jamboree participants. From the presented projects all judges select the winner of this year's iGEM competition, the Grand Prize Winner team, who are then awarded a big metal Lego-brick (see fig. below). The winning team may keep this challenge trophy for a year until it gets awarded to the next 'Grand Prize Winner'. Participants of a 'Grand Prize Winner' team are also given challenge coins of the respective year (see fig. below).

File:IGEM certificate.png|Participant's certificate

File:IGEM-gold medal.tif|Gold medal sticker

{{Bar chart

| title = Growth of the annual iGEM Jamboree{{cite web |url= https://competition.igem.org/ |title=iGEM Competitions |last= |first= |date= |website= igem.org|access-date= 2023-04-25|quote=}}| data_type = No. of participants

| label_type = Year| bar_width = 35| width_units = em| data_max = 10000| float = right

| label1 = 2004 | data1 = 31 | comment1 = 5 teams

| label2 = 2005 | data2 = 125 | comment2 = 13 teams

| label3 = 2006 | data3 = 723 | comment3 = 32 teams

| label4 = 2007 | data4 = 777 | comment4 = 54 teams

| label5 = 2008 | data5 = 1248 | comment5 = 88 teams

| label6 = 2009 | data6 = 1840 | comment6 = 113 teams

| label7 = 2010 | data7 = 2327 | comment7 = 128 teams

| label8 = 2011 | data8 = 2586 | comment8 = 165 teams

| label9 = 2012 | data9 = 3696 | comment9 = 190 teams

| label10 = 2013 | data10 = 4027 | comment10 = 215 teams

| label11 = 2014 | data11 = 4515 | comment11 = 245 teams

| label12 = 2015 | data12 = 5018 | comment12 = 280 teams

| label13 = 2016 | data13 = 4432 | comment13 = 300 teams

| label14 = 2017 | data14 = 5386 | comment14 = 310 teams

| label15 = 2018 | data15 = 5790 | comment15 = 340 teams

| label16 = 2019 | data16 = 6375 | comment16 = 353 teams

| label17 = 2020 | data17 = 4800 | comment17 = 249 teams

|data18=7314|label18=2021|comment18=350 teams

|data19=7757|label19=2022|comment19=356 teams

|data20=8541|label20=2023|comment20=390 teams

|label21=2024|comment21=410 teams|data21=9507}}

iGEM developed out of student projects conducted during MIT's Independent Activities Periods in 2003 and 2004.{{cite web |url=http://igem.org/wiki/index.php?title=IGEM/Learn_About |title=Learn about iGEM |access-date=2013-05-06}}{{cite web|last=Trafton|first=Anne|title=Rewiring Cells|publisher=Technology Review|url=http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=37290}} Later in 2004, a competition with five teams from various schools was held. In 2005, teams from outside the United States took part for the first time.{{cite web |url=http://2006.igem.org/Igem_2005 |title=iGEM 2005 |access-date=2013-05-06}} Since then iGEM has continued to grow, with 130 teams entering in 2010.{{cite web |url=http://igem.org/Previous_iGEM_Competitions |title=Previous iGEM Competitions |publisher=iGEM |access-date=2011-11-12}}

Randy Rettberg, an engineer who has worked for technology companies including Apple, Sun and BBN,{{cite journal |title=The Bleeding Edge |publisher=IEEE |doi=10.1109/MM.1998.653009 |year=1998 |last1=Rettberg |first1=R. |last2=Dally |first2=W.J. |last3=Culler |first3=D.E. |journal=IEEE Micro |volume=18 |pages=10–11 }} is the founder and president of iGEM.

Because of this increasing size, in the years 2011 - 2013 the competition was split into three regions: Europe, the Americas, and Asia (though teams from Africa and Australia also entered via "Europe" and "Asia" respectively).{{cite web |url=http://igem.org/Team_List?year=2011 |title=Team List 2011 |publisher=iGEM |access-date=18 October 2014}} Regional jamborees occurred during October; and some subset of teams attending those events were selected to advance to the World Championship at MIT in November.{{cite web |url=http://2011.igem.org/Jamborees |title=Jamborees |publisher=iGEM |access-date=18 October 2014}}

In January 2012 the iGEM Foundation was spun out of MIT as an independent non-profit organization located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The iGEM Foundation supports scientific research and education through operating the iGEM competition. The same year, iGEM expanded into having not only the Collegiate division, but also competitions for entrepreneurs and high school students.

For their tenth anniversary, iGEM added new tracks to the existing ones: Art & Design, Community Labs, Entrepreneurship, Measurement, Microfluidics, Policy & Practice, and Software. Although Entrepreneurship and Software were tracks in previous years, in 2014 they were made more distinct in terms of their judging requirements.{{cite web |url=http://2014.igem.org/Tracks |title=Tracks 2014 |publisher=iGEM |access-date=24 October 2014}} Furthermore, in 2014 iGEM did not have regional jamborees, but instead hosted a giant jamboree so every team could participate in one conference in Cambridge unlike in previous years where only the regional finalists were brought to Cambridge.{{cite web |url=http://2014.igem.org/Giant_Jamboree |title=Giant Jamboree|publisher=iGEM |access-date=24 October 2014}}

The iGEM Jamborees for 2020 and 2021 were held online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starting in 2022, the event was redesigned and rebranded to the iGEM Grand Jamboree, held in the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.

Beyond just building biological systems, broader goals of iGEM include:

• To enable the systematic engineering of biology.
• To promote the open and transparent development of tools for engineering biology.
• And to help construct a society that can productively and safely{{cite journal|doi=10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.7|title=Biosafety Considerations of Synthetic Biology in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition|journal=BioScience|volume=63|pages=25–34|year=2013|last1=Guan|first1=Zheng-jun|last2=Schmidt|first2=Markus|last3=Pei|first3=Lei|last4=Wei|first4=Wei|last5=Ma|first5=Ke-Ping|doi-access=free}} apply biological technology.

iGEM's dual aspects of self-organization and imaginative manipulation of genetic material have demonstrated a new way to arouse student interest in modern biology and to develop their independent learning skills.

[[File:Best iGEM Medal by Country.svg|1000px|center|thumb|Best iGEM Medal by Country - All Divisions as of November 2024.{{legend|#ffd700|Gold Medal}}

{{legend|#666666|Silver Medal}} {{legend|#cd7f32|Bronze Medal}}]]

[[File:IGEM Grand Prize Winners High School 2019.svg|300px|thumb|Grand Prize Winners by Country - High School (as of November 2024).{{legend|#00cccc|1 Title}}

{{legend|#008080|2 Titles}} {{legend|#004d4d|3 Titles}} {{legend|#003333|4 Titles}} {{legend|#002626|5 Titles}}]]

[[File:IGEM Grand Prize Winners Undergrad 2019.svg|300px|thumb|Grand Prize Winners by Country/Region - Undergrad (as of November 2024).{{legend|#00cccc|1 Title}}

{{legend|#008080|2 Titles}} {{legend|#004d4d|3 Titles}}]]

[[File:IGEM Grand Prize Winners Overgrad 2019.svg|300px|thumb|Grand Prize Winners by Country/Region - Overgrad (as of November 2024).{{legend|#00cccc|1 Title}}

{{legend|#008080|2 Titles}} {{legend|#004d4d|3 Titles}} {{legend|#003333|4 Titles}}]]

{{NoteFoot}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14Biology-t.html |title=Do-It-Yourself Genetic Engineering |work=New York Times |date=2010-02-14 |access-date=2010-05-04 | first=Jon | last=Mooallem}}
• {{cite web |url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/28/090928fa_fact_specter |title=A Life of Its Own: Where will synthetic biology lead us? |publisher=New Yorker |date=2009-09-28 |access-date=2010-05-04}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/2010/News/WTX063523.htm |title=iGEM Team Funding |publisher=Wellcome Trust |access-date=2010-12-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101202190636/http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/2010/News/WTX063523.htm |archive-date=December 2, 2010 }}
• {{cite journal|doi=10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.7|title=Biosafety Considerations of Synthetic Biology in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition|journal=BioScience|volume=63|pages=25–34|year=2013|last1=Guan|first1=Zheng-jun|last2=Schmidt|first2=Markus|last3=Pei|first3=Lei|last4=Wei|first4=Wei|last5=Ma|first5=Ke-Ping|doi-access=free}}

• [http://www.igem.org/ iGEM]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20170408112552/http://partsregistry.org/ Registry of Standard Biological Parts]
• [http://www.biobricks.org/ The BioBricks Foundation]

Category:Educational organizations based in the United States

Category:Genetic engineering in the United States

Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Category:Recurring events established in 2003

Category:Synthetic biology

Category:Biology competitions