Bilkent-UNAMBG Team won silver medal in iGEM — International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition organized at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, with their project named “Smelling Cancer”. Bilkent-UNAMBG iGEM Team is formed by undergraduate students Özge Beğli, Hazal Beril Çatalak, Büşra Merve Kırpat, Ayşenaz Ozantürk, Simay Ayhan, and Musa Efe Işılak, who are working as undergraduate researchers at UNAM’s Synthetic Biosystems Laboratory led by Assist. Prof. Dr. Urartu Özgür Şafak Şeker (MSN and UNAM). For the iGEM competition at MIT, Bilkent-UNAMBG Team has been supervised by Dr. Şeker together with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Işık Yuluğ (Department of MBG and UNAM).
UNAM’s Project aims to design synthetic genetic circuits coupled with enabled genetic logic gates in bacteria that can process signals from volatile organic compounds in the exhaled breath of the patients to diagnose breast cancer conditions. The overarching goal of the project is to produce a new kit that can be routinely, easily and non-invasively diagnose different cancer types.
The iGEM competition is a worldwide synthetic biology competition organized by The Internationally Genetically Engineered Machine Foundation since 2004. The iGEM Foundation was established at MIT and is dedicated to synthetic biology education and competition.
Bilkent-UNAMBG iGEM Team Members: Büşra Merve Kırpat, Özge Beğli, Simay Ayhan, Musa Efe Işılak, Hazal Beril Çatalak, and Ayşenaz Ozantürk (from left to right) at UNAM lab.
