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Green light for Newcastle University students' design

A groundbreaking discovery by Newcastle University students could help tackle disease in the developing world.

Medical and computing science students have been working together to design a bacterium that glows red if pathogens are present and green in the presence of harmless bacteria.

The simplicity of the design - and the fact that it can be dried and broken down into spore form - means there is no need for sophisticated laboratories, so it can be used literally ‘in the field’.

The six students will be pitching their idea at an international competition in Boston, USA.

The International Genetically Engineered Machines contest (iGEM), which will take place this weekend (8-9 Nov), is run out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. The aim is to get together a team of students from a variety of backgrounds to design and genetically engineer a bacterium to do something novel and useful.

There are 84 teams registered for this year’s event and it is the first time Newcastle University has been represented. The team, which consists of both undergraduate and masters students, has received expert advice from as far afield as New Zealand.

“This represents our first step into the hot new field of synthetic biology”, said Dr Jennifer Hallinan, advisor and RCUK Academic Research Fellow in Complex Systems, School of Computing Science. “The students have found it quite challenging and it’s really taken them out of their comfort zone, but they’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

“It is a tremendously exciting opportunity, both for the students themselves, and for the University.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .