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Press Releases

Yet another gold medal for the Évry team at iGEM, the international synthetic biology competition!


For the fifth consecutive year, the Évry team has brought home a gold medal from the renowned international competition for synthetic biology iGEM. Their winning directed-evolution project, “Evolution.T7,” shows promise for a wide variety of applications.

The team was also nominated for the “Best Wiki” prize, recognizing its website as one of the ten best among the more than 350 in competition.
IGEM 2021 - Equipe d'Evry IGEM 2021 - Equipe d'Evry

More than 350 student teams were brought together on 4–14 November for the 2021 edition of the renowned international synthetic biology competition iGEM. For the event, the Genopole Évry Paris-Saclay iGEM team chose not to focus on a specific application but rather to carry out a basic research project with extensive practical potential. Entitled Evolution.T7, their project harnesses the power of natural selection to create novel biological functions. It calls upon a method named directed evolution to target a specific gene of interest.

All forms of life emerge through evolution.

Natural selection of the random, successive mutations occurring in life have led to a vast diversity of extremely complex organisms.
Directed evolution is a laboratory method designed to accelerate the generation of genetic diversity and even target therein the production of protein variants with desirable properties. Indeed, in vivo diversification targeted to specific genes has recently become possible via the use of deaminases guided by an RNA polymerase from bacteriophage (or just “phage”) T7.
The Évry team maximized the efficacy of their method by combining:

  1. the use of new deaminases with improved mutation rates;
  2. and the use of an innovative process that targets both DNA strands simultaneously, thus increasing the diversity generated at each mutation cycle.

The Évry students tested their method on two genes, one a transcription factor and the other a gene involved in resistance to ampicillin, an antibiotic. The transcription factor is useful for applications targeting the biological production of various compounds. As for the antibiotic resistance gene, the team was able to mute this latter so that it conferred resistance to aztreonam, another important antibiotic in human healthcare. Such a tool can improve knowledge on and the monitoring of the extraordinarily important issue of antibiotic resistance.

The 2022 edition of iGEM is to be held in Paris, providing an excellent opportunity to let French teams and the country’s competencies in synthetic biology take center stage.

The Évry team’s 2021 iGEM project was developed with financial support from the University of Évry, Genopole, Paris-Saclay University and the Investments for the Future program. Material support was provided by SnapGene, New England Biolabs, IDT, and Twist Bioscience. The project and its team were supervised by the Laboratory of Systems & Synthetic Biology (LISSB) (UMR 8030 Genomics Metabolics Laboratory), the Micalis Institute and GenHotel.

Press contact

Jean-Marie Jourand

Communications Director, University of Évry

communication@univ-evry.fr – +33 1 69 47 80 71 – +33 6 27 83 13 11

Ioana Popescu

Laboratory LISSB, UMR8030 Metabolic Genomics of the Université of Évry

ioana.popescu@univ-evry.fr – +33 1 69 47 44 47

Véronique Le Boulc’h

Science and Citizen Communications Manager

Veronique.leboulch@genopole.fr – +33 1 60 87 44 98

  • About Genopole

    Genopole is a French biocluster dedicated to research in genetics and biotechnologies in healthcare and the environment. It unites 77 biotech companies, 18 research laboratories and 26 technological platforms, as well as a range of tertiary-level training programs with the University of Évry-Paris Saclay (data as of end December 2020).

    Genopole’s objectives are to create and support biotech companies and the transfer of technologies to the industrial sector, favor the development of life sciences research, and promote advanced training programs for those domains. Headed by Gilles Lasserre, Genopole is funded primarily by the French State, the Île-de-France Administrative Region, the Essonne Administrative Department, the Grand Paris Sud Urban Area, the city of Évry-Courcouronnes and the AFM-Téléthon.

  • About the University of Évry

    Counting close to 12,000 students, the University of Évry is a part of Paris-Saclay University, which represents 15% of research in France. The University of Évry stands out particularly for its cutting-edge research in such fields as genomics and post-genomics, applied mathematics, informatics, information and communications technologies, space sciences and technologies, robotics, and autonomous air and terrestrial vehicles. The university’s work and research involve close partnerships with the Genopole biocluster and the institution acts as a reference organism for both the Paris-Drones cluster and the Aeronautic and Spatial Careers and Qualifications Campus grouping. Finally, the university’s social sciences branches (economy, law, sociology, history, musicology, etc.), beyond addressing societal issues, also explore economic equilibriums, compare public and private law, and question humankind’s place at work and its relationships with visual media, art and music.

Article posted on 19 November 2021

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