2020: Rosewood
Illegal wildlife trade is a scourge that affects biodiversity, destroys the fragile equilibrium of natural ecosystems, leads to accelerated extinction of species, and adversely impacts humankind. Elephant’s ivory, rhinoceros’ horn, tiger’s fur are all well-known examples, but the most trafficked wildlife product in the world is Rosewood. To the naked eye, Rosewood logs are indistinguishable from other non-protected wood species. However, it can be distinguished at the genetic level with high precision. Here, we are developing cheap, portable and easy-to-use biosensors, based on toehold switches. Our biosensor uses engineered molecular machinery of the common gut bacterium to sense nucleic acid signatures specific to the Rosewood tree. We demonstrate how to go from the design to the final application, identifying the trafficked Rosewood to the family, phylum, or the species level. Deployment of portable and cost-effective rosewood biosensors will enable on-site surveillance and help to protect this rare and valuable species.
For more infos, visit our WIKI and/or look at our POSTER and/or watch our presentation VIDEO.
Rewards
Gold Medal
Best New Application Project Award Nomination, Overgrad
Best Measurement Award Nomination, Overgrad
Best New Composite Part Award Nomination, Overgrad
Best Part Collection Award Nomination, Overgrad
The 2020 iGEM competition
In 2020, 256 team from 36 countries participated at the competition and attended the Giant Jamboree that was held in online from 13th to 22th of November 2020. Full infos and results are available on the iGEM 2020 website.
After iGEM
After the Jamboree, we have performed additional experiments to further characterise the best ‘toehold switches’ and, together with the results obtained during the iGEM competition, we have prepared an scientific article that has been published in an international peer-reviewed journal:
Soudier P, Rodriguez Pinzon D, Reif-Trauttmansdorff T, Hijazi H, Cherrière M, Goncalves Pereira C, Blaise D, Pispisa M, Saint-Julien A, Hamlet W, Nguevo M, Gomes E, Belkhelfa S, Niarakis A, Kushwaha M, Grigoras I. Toehold switch based biosensors for sensing the highly trafficked rosewood Dalbergia maritima. Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology (2022) 7, 791-801. doi: 10.1016/j.synbio.2022.03.003