A Tandon VIP team won silver at the 2019 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition, the world’s premier synthetic biology contest.
坦顿VIP团队在2019年国际基因工程机器（iGEM）竞赛（世界首屈一指的合成生物学竞赛）中获得银牌。
When laypeople hear the name “E. coli,” many will think immediately of food poisoning or terrible gastric distress, but in reality, most types of E. coli are harmless and even serve to help keep the human digestive tract healthy.
当外行听到“大肠杆菌”这个名字时，很多人会立刻想到食物中毒或可怕的胃痛，但实际上，大多数类型的大肠杆菌是无害的，甚至有助于保持人类消化道的健康。
A group of students recently employed the oft-misunderstood bacteria in a project that garnered them a silver medal at the 2019 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition, the world’s premier synthetic biology contest, which draws hundreds of teams from around the globe each year to create novel biological systems. (At the beginning of the competition season, each team is given a kit of more than 1,000 standard interchangeable parts called BioBricks from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts; they then call upon their knowledge of molecular biology techniques and engineering concepts to create a genetically engineered system and operate it in living cells in order to address a real-world problem.)
最近，一群学生在一个项目中使用了经常被误解的细菌，该项目在2019年国际基因工程机器（iGEM）竞赛（全球首屈一指的合成生物学竞赛）中为他们赢得了银牌，该竞赛每年吸引全球数百支队伍来创建新的生物系统。（在比赛季开始时，每个队从标准生物部件登记处获得一套1000多个标准可互换部件，称为BioBricks；然后，他们利用分子生物学技术和工程概念的知识，创建一个基因工程系统，并在活细胞中运行，以解决现实世界的问题。）
Part of Tandon’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) initiative, the iGEM team decided to tackle the issue of producing flavonoids in an efficient, cost-effective way.
作为Tandon垂直整合项目（VIP）计划的一部分，iGEM团队决定以高效、经济的方式解决黄酮类化合物的生产问题。
Flavonoids — found naturally in fruits, vegetables, and other plants — are known to exhibit a wide range of health-related benefits because of their anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, anti-mutagenic, and anti-carcinogenic properties. Plants, however, take a long time to grow and require sunlight, water, and nutrients, and even after they’re grown, extracting flavonoids can be expensive and time consuming.
Flavonoids -在水果、蔬菜和其他植物中天然发现的，因为它们具有抗氧化、抗炎、抗突变和抗致癌特性，因此显示出广泛的与健康相关的益处。然而，植物的生长需要很长时间，需要阳光、水和营养，即使在它们生长之后，提取黄酮类化合物也可能是昂贵和耗时的。
The team’s solution was to insert DNA into E. coli, which is relatively easy to engineer and behaves predictably, so that it could produce flavonoids, thereby simultaneously reducing the time needed for synthesis and increasing yields over what might naturally be obtained by plant extraction. Team members — whose majors include biotechnology, biomolecular science, and chemical and biomolecular engineering, among others — constructed a fully functioning bioreactor and employed optogenetics, which has been used in recent years as a way to signal cells with light. Combining it with metabolic engineering, which usually relies on chemical inducers to activate gene expression, results in more efficient and precise activation of target genes, as the team found.
研究小组的解决方案是将DNA插入大肠杆菌中，大肠杆菌相对容易进行工程设计，而且行为可以预测，这样就可以产生类黄酮，从而同时减少合成所需的时间，提高产量，而不是通过植物提取自然获得的产量。团队成员——其专业包括生物技术、生物分子科学、化学和生物分子工程等——建造了一个功能齐全的生物反应器，并采用了近年来被用作光信号细胞的光遗传学。研究小组发现，将其与通常依赖化学诱导剂激活基因表达的代谢工程相结合，可以更有效、更精确地激活靶基因。
“My favorite part of working on the project was getting to see the gene circuit and engineering work come together after the troubleshooting process to test the bioreactor,” chemistry major Neelam Pandya said, while Malini Basu, who is studying biomolecular science, asserted, “The best part of NYU iGEM is that a diverse team of students from a variety of academic backgrounds came together to successfully build a meaningful project from the ground up.”
化学专业的Neelam Pandya说：“我最喜欢的工作是在对生物反应器进行故障排除后，看到基因电路和工程工作结合在一起，”而正在研究生物分子科学的Malini Basu则断言，“NYU iGEM最好的部分是来自各种学术背景汇集在一起，从一开始就成功地构建了一个有意义的项目。”
Senior Michelle Lam found working on a VIP project to be an educationally rich and rewarding experience. “Learning how to troubleshoot our failed experiments was both gratifying and humbling,” she admitted. “We grew as a group, and I think NYU iGEM will continue to be a team to watch in the future.” David Sung, an instrumental member of the bioreactor portion of the project, concurs. “The VIP programs offer a creative space for students to collaborate on ideas in order to accomplish something great and to meet amazing people in the process,” he said.
Michelle Lam 发现，在一个VIP项目上工作是一种丰富而有益的教育经验。她承认：“学习如何排除实验失败的故障，既让人欣慰，也让人谦卑。”。“我们作为一个团队成长，我认为纽约大学伊格姆将继续是一个团队，在未来的观察，”大卫宋，一个生物反应器部分项目的工具成员，同意。他说：“VIP项目为学生提供了一个创意空间，让他们在创意上进行合作，从而完成一些伟大的事情，并在这个过程中结识令人惊叹的人。”。
Sung is now looking forward to the next competition. “It was a surreal experience to finally see our project come to life, and it was not until the very end when I was able to truly appreciate all of the hard work that went into it,” he said. “The positive feedback that we received from the judges, the audience, and students from other iGEM teams not only gave me a sense of pride, but also gave me the motivation to work harder for the next time!”
Sung正期待着下一场比赛。他说：“最终看到我们的项目得以实现是一次超现实的经历，直到最后我才能够真正体会到其中所付出的所有努力。”。“我们从评委、观众和其他iGEM团队的学生那里得到的积极反馈，不仅让我感到自豪，也让我有了下一次更加努力工作的动力！”
Kelly Huang, one of the team’s founding leaders, points out that even though medals are awarded at the competition, a sense of camaraderie and common purpose pervaded the event. “iGem does not encourage a cut-throat mentality,” she said. “Synthetic biology has the potential to solve so many problems, and that’s what we’re all working to do.”
该队的创始领导人之一Kelly Huang指出，尽管在比赛中颁发了奖牌，但友谊和共同目标的感觉弥漫在整个比赛中。她说：“iGem不鼓励刻薄的心态。合成生物学有潜力解决这么多问题，而这正是我们都在努力的方向。”
She applauded Professors Jack Bringardner and Peter Voltz, who oversee the VIP program; Professor Jin Ryoun Kim, who advises the iGEM team; and Dean Jelena Kovačević, who has been an avid supporter of the entire VIP initiative. “We performed as well as we did at the competition in large part because we had so much support and so many resources to count on,” she explained.
她赞扬了负责VIP项目的Jack Bringardner教授和Peter Voltz教授、为iGEM团队提供建议的Jin Ryoun Kim教授以及热心支持整个VIP项目的Jelena Kovačević院长。她解释说：“我们在比赛中的表现和我们在比赛中的表现一样，很大程度上是因为我们有太多的支持和太多的资源可以依靠。”
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