Bye-monia: iGEM Groningen 2021
Team Groningen aims to develop a solution to help lowering ammonia emissions
Every year, the University of Groningen composes a multidisciplinary team of students who compete in the international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. iGEM is an international competition in biotechnology aimed at finding new solutions to current global and local societal issues. For the second time the team consists of students of the UG’s Faculty of Science and Engineering and students of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. The team aims to develop a solution to help lowering ammonia emissions.
The team will defend their Bye-monia project in the final online competition, which will be held from November 4 to 15.
Team Groningen 2021
This year the Groningen team is addressing the nitrogen crisis. The Netherlands is producing excess nitrogen, which is harmful to nature and biodiversity. One of the main culprits for this so-called nitrogen crisis is animal agriculture, a vital income source for the Dutch economy. The project of the Groningen 2021 team targets ammonia emissions contributing to the crisis and aims to convert them into a beneficial feed additive. Saccharomyces spp. have been engineered to synthesize alpha-amylase, an enzyme that optimizes cattles’ digestion. This way, their milk production and growth will be enhanced while ammonia emissions will be reduced simultaneously. Residual ammonia will be captured by a state-of-the-art filter device, a Metal-Organic Framework (MOF), and fed back to our GMO. Furthermore, insights from artificial intelligence will be employed to optimize the engineering process.
Additional activities
As a part of the competition, students are asked to connect science to the broad public. Therefore, the Groningen team of 2021 has a very dedicated Human Practice team that works on deeply understanding the problem and contacting stakeholders that are involved in the topic (e.g. farmers). Additionally, creating education and scientific outreach material is important to make science more accessible. To achieve this, the team has designed and written a series of comics that explains synthetic biology in a plain and simple manner. These comics can be found here.
About iGEM
The iGEM competition is a global event allowing more than 360 student teams from all around the globe to have an opportunity to find solutions for real-world problems by using synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is an area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.
Communication channels
Mail: igemteam rug.nl| Last modified: | 14 October 2021 12.46 p.m. |
More news
-
15 October 2025
Blaauw Sterrenwacht geopend tijdens Nacht van de Nacht
De Blaauw Sterrenwacht van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen is geopend tijdens de Nacht van de Nacht op zaterdag 25 oktober 2025. Tijdens deze nacht, waarin we de klok een uur terugzetten, kunnen bezoekers sterrenkijken en zijn er allerlei...
-
08 October 2025
Not all plastic needs to be bio-based or biodegradable
Per person, we throw away about 33 kilos of plastic packaging per year. Professor of Polymer Chemistry Katja Loos is working on a more sustainable future for plastics - by looking at more than the material itself.
-
06 October 2025
The GenAI-bubble will burst, but don’t give up on AI altogether
'People keep promoting the belief that generative AI provides universal tools that are capable of much more,’ says Michael Biehl, Professor of Machine Learning. ‘Sooner or later, the genAI bubble will burst,’ he is certain. But that doesn’t mean all...