IIT Madras

This is the second time that IIT Madras has sent a team to iGEM. Our team in iGEM 08, the only team to represent India in the competition that year, won the “Best Foundational advance” award, the "Best New Biobrick" award and a Silver, for their work on hybrid promoters which have now been added under the category of promoters (IIT Madras Stresskit promoters). This year, the team is composed of 9 Undergraduates, all from the Department of Biotechnology. We hope to go one step better this year with our design of a combinatorial lock system, and thereby set the standard for future competitions.

Our Project this year is titled PLASMID which stands for Plasmid Locking Assembly for Sustaining Multiple Inserted DNA. This project is based on the principle of Plasmid loss in Bacterial cells. Normally cells will tend to lose plasmids if there is no selection pressure for maintaining the plasmid. We will be developing genetic circuits in the cells to direct Plasmid Loss in a regulated fashion. We will finally perform "Proof of principle" experiments to check our hypothesis of directed plasmid loss in presence of the pre-defined selection pressures.

Take a look into our detailed design documents to know more about the project, the PLASMID.

Our team consists of 9 Undergraduate students from IIT Madras. To know more about us, look at our Team.