UBC iGEM Team Wins Top Awards for Novel DNA-Based Data Storage Platform

The University of British Columbia Vancouver (UBC Vancouver) iGEM team successfully showcased nuCloud at the annual iGEM Giant Jamboree, the synthetic biology industry’s largest innovation event hosted by the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation. This year, the UBC Vancouver team achieved its best performance in the team’s history since 2013, winning the following awards and nominations, making them the best-performing undergraduate team in North America:

• Gold Medal for Excellence in Synthetic Biology
• Best Hardware Special Award (Undergraduate Category)
• Best Sustainable Development Impact Special Award (Undergraduate Category)
• Nominated for Best Biomanufacturing Village Award (Top 5 in Undergraduate + Overgraduate Combined Category)

The Giant Jamboree is the culminating event of iGEM’s annual, worldwide synthetic biology competition for students to use genetic engineering to solve local problems all around the world. Each year, the competition brings together more than 6,000 participants from across the globe to explore and create unique applications of synthetic biology with the mission to bring positive contributions to their communities and society at large. Beyond the technology, participants are evaluated on teamwork, responsibility, entrepreneurship, sharing, safety, and more.

The UBC Vancouver team’s project aims to address the urgent global need for sustainable, high-capacity data storage by creating a DNA-based data storage platform, inspired by nature’s efficient data encoding in DNA. Traditional data centers are environmentally costly, consuming massive amounts of energy and water and producing significant carbon emissions, so nuCloud offers a greener alternative using a thermostable variant of a template-independent DNA polymerase for efficient data storage DNA synthesis. nuCloud’s custom data encoding and decoding pipeline allows users to convert between binary data and DNA sequences, enabling high-density, durable storage with built-in error correction to maintain data integrity. Through the use of nuCloud’s custom modular hardware components, including its bioreactors and microfluidic chips, nuCloud demonstrates its potential towards scalability and accessibility, aligning with both industry needs and environmental responsibility.

“This year’s Giant Jamboree was a spectacular display of hard work and ingenuity. These students are showing the world what’s possible when we fearlessly tackle tough problems and open our minds to new applications of engineering biology,” said Randy Rettberg, co-founder and president of iGEM. “Many of the projects presented at iGEM will serve as the foundation and inspiration for important research, influential companies, and international interest to come – these participants are most certainly tomorrow’s leaders.”

For more on iGEM Giant Jamboree, visit: https://jamboree.igem.org/2024/home

Students on the team include: Chaehyeon Lee, Narjis Alhusseini, Achint Lail, Qingru Kong, Keheng (Tina) Wang, Lucy Hao, Piyush Awasthi, Yejin Lhee, Aden Chan, Ada Jiang, Burak Ozkan, Chloe King, Daniel Hinatsu, Diego Perez Hidalgo, Pattarin Blanchard, Ran Tao, Matthias Wong, Riya Alluri, Samuel Salitra, Sebastian Hyland, Jessica Xin, Aoniya Colynn, Charlotte Lee, and Karen Lin.

The team is supervised by its Principal Investigator, Dr. Steven Hallam, and instructor, Antonio Wong.

About iGEM

iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and continues to advance the field through education, competition, and industry collaboration. iGEM’s annual student competition is the largest synthetic biology innovation program and a launchpad for the industry’s most successful leaders and companies. The competition empowers thousands of local people to solve local problems around the world by engineering biology for safe and responsible solutions.

This text, with minor edits, was provided by UBC iGEM.