FSU’s iGEM Team continues to bring home honors, this time earning a silver medal in the 2021 iGEM Giant Jamboree. 

“Over five years, the FSU iGEM teams have won one gold, two silver and one bronze medal,” said Cesar Rodriguez, M.D., the team’s leader who serves as research faculty and entrepreneur in residence at the College of Medicine. “FSU iGEM has the only gold medal in the state of Florida.”

FSU’s multidisciplinary team was one of 13 U.S.-based collegiate teams to win silver. Its presentation, “ChiFresh: Combatting Food Insecurity by Extending the Shelf Life of Fresh Produce,” combined chitosan-based protective coatings for fresh produce, chitin-based biodegradable packaging and debit card-accessible refrigerators in areas with reduced access to fresh produce. The team formulated a growth medium for the Chitin Secretion Cells using brewer’s spent yeast, a waste product of beer production. View the documentation and the full list of medal winners.

iGEM, which stands for International Genetically Engineered Machine, gives students “the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology by tackling everyday issues facing the world.

“The FSU iGEM teams strive for gold but we are thankful for the outcome,” Rodriguez said. “Building and maintaining an iGEM team during the COVID-19 pandemic was a unique challenge.  We all learned a lot.”

Contact Audrey Post at audrey.post@med.fsu.edu