Pakistan’s first team of 12 top biotechnology undergraduate students on Tuesday won a bronze medal in the iGEM World Championship Jamboree in Boston, USA.
Students from all over the country gathered recently in Peshawar to use the cutting-edge discipline of synthetic biology to solve one of the most pressing environmental challenges in Pakistan.
The team consists of five girls and seven boys from across the country, including Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Kalat, Swat, Waziristan, Mardan and Peshawar. The fact that they belonged to different parts of the country made it representative of the biotech talent across Pakistan.
The iGEM, or the international genetically engineered machines competition, is a flagship students’ contest that started in MIT 15 years ago. It noted that 285 teams from all over the world took part in the competition last year, though there was no participation from Pakistan.
Dr Faisal Khan, the principal investigator and team supervisor who is also the director of the Institute of Integrative Biosciences at CECOS University, Peshawar says they have been waiting for this moment to introduce synthetic biology in Pakistan.
He felt there could be no better way than giving students the opportunity to do cutting-edge biotechnology research. “We cannot be playing with ‘Windows95’ in an age of ‘Android’ and ‘iOS’ and we desperately needed this upgrade in life sciences in the country,” he pointed out.
The iGEM Peshawar team worked on a bio-based sensor that will detect poisonous gases in the air. It is based on a bacterial cell with genetic circuits made of synthetic DNA that the students designed and fabricated to produce different colours in response to the presence of carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide or both.
“This is a great proof of concept. If we can create a bio-sensor for these gases, we can in principle create bio-sensors for other uses like detecting adulterated milk, toxic metals in drinking water or even temperature-sensing devices,” argued Dr Faisal Khan.
The research also had an element of ‘human practices’ where the students looked into the ethical and social implications of their project by talking to different stakeholders and gathering insights that could be integrated into it.
The iGEM team also put in outreach and education efforts by visiting schools and colleges in and around their cities and leading mini-workshops on synthetic biology to share the latest with the students and inspire them to pick up science as a career.
“We cannot be more grateful to the Directorate of Science and Technology, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for their faith and support in propagating the emerging field of synthetic biology in the country,” commented Professor Dr. Riaz A. Khattak, Vice Chancellor, CECOS University in Peshawar in September this year.