The Makerere University iGEM Team emerged among the top 10 winners of Opentrons OT-2 Robot in the just concluded iGEM Team global Challenge. The OT-2 is a robotic innovation that can automate hundreds of life science protocols and workflows and has high-precision electronic pipettes that can execute liquid transfers as quickly and accurately as robots ten times the price. According to the Opentrons website, the OT-2 costs between US$3,500 and US$5,500.
The Mak team who will be engineering PET plastic degradation pathways in E. coli to solve the waste accumulation problem in developing urban centers will represent Uganda and East Africa in the forthcoming global iGEM (https://igem.org) science competition in the U.S, aimed at promoting Synthetic biology research.
Mr. Otim Geoffrey, Instructor, iGEM Makerere Team acknowledged the support from the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Biosecurity (CoVAB) in promoting this unique science competition to the next level in Africa. The Instructor made the application on behalf of his iGEM Team and Makerere University.
"We are super excited and proud for this first achievement. We therefore call for more support from the University as our team will be traveling to U.S in October for the grand iGEM competition/Jamboree. Our team is the first to participate and represent Makerere University, Uganda and East Africa in this global science competition."
Mr. Otim additionally shared that Twist Bioscience (https://twistbioscience.com) covered the cost of the Mak iGEM Team's registration for the competition to the tune of over UGX20million.
The selection was based on:
– Demonstrated technical capability
– Commitment to Reproducibility
– Open-source integrations with other hardware and software
– Impact-full projects that make the world a healthier, happier, more ecologically sustainable place
– Plans to add protocols to the Opentrons Protocol Library <http://protocols.opentrons.com/> for the entire scientific community to use.
We congratulate the team and wish it good luck
Please follow the link below for more information.
http://blog.opentrons.com/igem_winners_2018/
Article by CoVAB Communications Office pr[at]covab.mak.ac.ug