UNews - Cambridge

U of L iGEM team a Regional finalist

trevor.kenney — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:19:06 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) team achieved finalist status at the 2011 Americas Regional Jamboree in Indianapolis, Ind. recently, advancing to the World Championship Jamboree, Nov. 5-7 in Cambridge, Mass.

The U of L iGEM team, led by Dr. HJ Wieden, was one of four schools that achieved finalists status, along with Brown-Stanford, Yale ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and the eventual Regional champion, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Washington. Using primarily undergraduate students to compete against a field of mainly masters and doctoral level students, speaks well to the excellence of the U of L team.

Already recognized as one of the top 10 per cent of iGEM teams in the world, the U of L team will now turn its focus to the World Championship Jamboree to be held at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge next month.

To check out the U of L's results from Regionals, follow this link.

Library aids in preserving Blackfoot past

trevor.kenney — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:57:21 +0000

Through its involvement with the Blackfoot Digital Library, and a recent effort that digitized back issues of the Kainai News, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library is helping to ensure that valuable Blackfoot heritage is being preserved for generations to come.

The library first got involved with the Blackfoot Digital Library project in 2006, with a digitization venture originally started by Ryan and Adrienne Heavy Head. It was designed to support community efforts in locating and repatriating Blackfoot materials, and later linked to the U of L's Native American Studies program's CURA project through Red Crow College. The goal of the partnership with our library was to gain access to ongoing funding through the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library (LHCADL) initiative.

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ saw great opportunities to partner with Red Crow College to ensure the longevity of the resources being catalogued by the Heavy Heads, and in 2008 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the two institutions. Through this agreement, the Blackfoot people retain ownership of the assets collected, and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ is responsible for the website.

The project continues to grow today as Adrienne Heavy Head gathers and digitizes artifacts, documents, audiovisual and archival materials. She also remains commited to the original initiative by identifying collections of Blackfoot items in museums around the world. Once found, she tries to get the items returned, or at least have digital photos or scans of the materials sent so that they can be added to the digital collection.

Many large collections of Blackfoot materials are housed in museums in the UK, and Adrienne is working on developing relationships with scholars and archivists in Scotland and England to learn more about their holdings. For example, the British Museum has a huge collection of items that very few Blackfoot people have seen, and it is only through cultivating these relationships that we are able to share information.

Heavy Head has been invited to present at conferences throughout the UK and is currently planning a trip to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Oxford to view the collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum. She also intends to visit both Cambridge and Exeter.

"These museums have some of the oldest collections of Blackfoot materials in the world," she says. "It is through our connection to the Blackfoot Digital Library that many of these doors have been opened to us, as we are now invited to conferences and they are more willing to talk to us."

Heavy Head has also made connections with both the National Trust for Scotland and the Glasgow Museum.

In addition to artifacts, oral history is also being preserved through the project. Existing interviews from older formats are being digitized, and the Kainai Studies Department at Red Crow College collects new videos of elders sharing their knowledge and stories. These invaluable experiences could otherwise be lost with their passing.

The Blackfoot Digital Library is available at blackfootdigitallibrary.org

This story first appeared in the Legend. For a full look at the January issue of the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Golden effort for U of L iGEM team

trevor.kenney — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:14:31 +0000

A group of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Chemistry/Biochemistry and Neuroscience students returned from a recent international genetically-engineered machines (iGEM) conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, MA as gold medalists and with a new appreciation for teamwork, inventiveness and taking chances.

The iGEM competition is regarded as the premier undergraduate synthetic biology competition in the World. Student teams are given a kit of biological parts – called 'BioBricks' – at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at their own schools, they use these parts, along with new parts of their own design, to build biological systems. They then operate these systems in living cells.

The 8-person U of L team worked on harvesting solar energy by refining what was termed a 'bio-battery', focusing on a type of bacteria called a cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) that has photosynthetic properties when exposed to sunlight.

"My iGEM experience, or my introduction to synthetic biology, began and ended with a bang," says team member Megan Torry.

"The competition was intriguing because it introduced me to a future that we cannot grasp. We have no idea of the vast number of possibilities of where the world will take us, and our future decisions regarding change. There does not seem to be an academic program that is as multi-disciplinary as iGEM. People from numerous backgrounds can come together and offer the team different perspectives and skills, further making it a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge goal to get more students involved."

The U of L iGEM team was one of the few composed mainly of
undergraduate students, and competed against more than 100 university teams to finish with a gold medal standing, one of 48 groups to achieve that mark.
They share their iGEM Gold Medal standing with such heavyweight universities as Stanford, Tokyo, Osaka, Johns Hopkins, Paris, and Cambridge, among others. They even outdid the incomparable Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) itself.

Team supervisor Dr. Hans-Joachim Wieden says the team did a tremendous job of making their project not only work, but also be complete enough to have other teams take an interest in their research.

"The team constructed some functional biobricks by successfully using synthetic biology to engineer an organism. We also furthered knowledge within the synthetic biology community and helped other teams with their projects. This is a lot of work, which the students take on in their spare time."

Torry and the others didn't seem to mind the time commitment or the complexity of their project. As successful as the project ultimately was, changes and chances were the order of the day to make the project work.

"Throughout the summer our project was forced to change as our team took chances again and again, and consequently were wrong, again and again. It was good that we were all too stubborn to stop showing up. I realized that being a risk taker and taking chances will expand synthetic biology because it will lead to the development of new ideas. I would suggest that anyone interested should take a chance with iGEM," says Torry.

"I have a BSc in Neuroscience, but iGEM allowed me to come to a conclusion that there are numerous novel lab procedures to expand my personal skills.

"I had to learn all of these new lab procedures, and I had to ask a lot of questions, interact, present, travel, write and develop myself over the last eight months. I was successful on a personal level because I was able to expand my talents, discover talent within myself, and see it in those working around me."

The iGEM project has evolved to become a credit course, and there is now scholarship money available for travel. As well, the group developed a business plan to further take advantage of any ideas that come out of the iGEM process.

UNews - Cambridge

U of L iGEM team a Regional finalist

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